The Ontological Error of Apokatastasis: A Critique of Origen’s Universalism and Its Modern Heirs

I. Introduction: The Return of an Old Heresy

Opening Thesis: The ancient doctrine of universal salvation (apokatastasis)—first systematically proposed by Origen of Alexandria—is not merely a minor theological misstep. It represents a profound deformation of Christian ontology, a fundamental twisting of the nature of reality as understood in orthodox Christianity. Universalism in this radical form promises that all will inevitably be saved in the end, even the devil himself. What may seem a message of hope is, in truth, a grave error that flattens the structure of being and undermines the very meaning of love, freedom, and justice. As such, the Church has long regarded Origen’s apokatastasis as a serious heresy, condemning it unequivocally in her councils and teachings .

Context: Origen taught in 3rd-century Alexandria, a city awash in Hellenistic learning. He was a philosophical and biblical scholar of astounding genius, deeply influenced by the Platonic worldview permeating his era. In Origen’s time, it was common to attempt grand syntheses of Christian revelation with Greek philosophy. Origen indeed constructed an audacious cosmic theology: blending biblical ideas with Platonism and even Stoic concepts, he proposed a spiritual cosmology in which souls pre-existed in a higher realm, fell into bodily existence, and would eventually return to the divine source. This “Christian Platonism” aimed to defend God’s goodness and unity in the face of evil by ultimately dissolving all duality and discord. Apokatastasis (Greek for “restoration”) was the capstone of Origen’s system: the belief that after purifying ages of struggle, all creatures—every human soul, even demons and Satan himself—would be restored to their original state of union with God. In Origen’s vision, history is the drama of exiled spirits finding their way back to God’s embrace; no creature’s estrangement is permanent.

Why it matters now: Though Origen’s particular speculations were consigned to error by the Church, the instinct behind his universalism has proven perennial. In our own time, modern liberal Christianity and postmodern secular thought alike have shown a strong tendency to resurrect Origen’s optimism in new guises. The allure is understandable: In an age uncomfortable with absolute truths and eternal judgments, the idea of universal salvation appeals to a sentimental desire for inclusivity and “tolerance.” Many today—often in the name of a loving God—seek to dissolve distinctions, hierarchy, and moral consequence in the name of love and unity. Contemporary theologians influenced by religious pluralism suggest that all religions are equally valid paths and that surely a merciful God would not damn anyone forever. Popular spirituality often reduces God’s love to mere kindness devoid of justice, echoing Origen’s instinct that divine love will simply overwhelm all resistance in the end. Thus the ancient error finds new life: a postmodern apokatastasis that preaches salvation without repentance, mercy without truth, and a kingdom of God without judgment.

Thesis Statement: This treatise argues that Origen’s doctrine of universal salvation is not just heterodox—it is the theological mirror of modern moral relativism, a “compassion” that ultimately nullifies the gravity of good and evil. Apokatastasis represents a sentimental flattening of being that denies the tragic seriousness of freedom, love, and personhood. By positing that all choices lead to the same outcome, Origen’s universalism erases the meaningful stakes of human freedom. It misunderstands the hierarchical nature of reality as created by God and the irrevocable potency of creaturely choices. In short, the desire that all be saved—noble in intention—when absolutized becomes an assault on truth. What follows is a comprehensive critique of this old heresy in both its original form and its modern variations. We will examine Origen’s philosophical and theological roots, articulate the ontological errors at play, contrast them with the orthodox Christian understanding of reality, freedom, and divine love, and show how the resurgence of Origenist thinking today leads not to genuine hope but to a pastoral nihilism. Universal salvation, when dissected, turns out to be a promise that would make nothing ultimately matter. Against this, the orthodox Christian vision proclaims a harmony of love and freedom in which God honors the choices of His creatures—an eternal symphony of being, rather than the monotone of an imposed unity.

(It must be noted at the outset that in critiquing Origen’s doctrine, we do so with respect for his brilliance and piety in other areas. Origen suffered for Christ and contributed greatly to early Christian thought. Yet, as the Church affirmed, even a genius can err. The Fifth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople II, 553 A.D.) anathematized the key tenets of Origen’s apokatastasis and related speculations . This condemnation forms the backdrop of our critique.)

II. The Roots of Origen’s Universalism

1. Philosophical Background: Platonism and the Longing for Unity

To understand Origen’s universalism, one must appreciate the philosophical soil in which it grew. Origen was deeply formed by Middle Platonic thought and the broadly Hellenistic worldview of his time. Platonism taught a cyclical vision of reality – the idea that all things emanate from the One (the ultimate Good) and in the end must return to that One. The material world, in Platonic eyes, is a realm of change and multiplicity, far inferior to the eternal realm of spiritual Forms. The highest goal of existence, for Platonists, is the ascension of the soul from the many back to the One, from the realm of bodily shadows back to the pure Light of truth. Reality was seen as a great hierarchy of being, cascading down from the perfect One to the lowest matter; yet this hierarchy was often interpreted as a continuum with no absolute breaks. Lower beings could, through purification and knowledge, ascend closer to the divine source. Evil, in this scheme, was typically understood not as an active rebellion, but as a privation of good or an ignorance—a by-product of distance from the One.

Crucially, Platonism and kindred schools harbored a deep aversion to the permanence of matter. The physical, the bodily, was considered a temporary scaffolding meant to be cast off as the soul rises. Plato’s own myths (such as in the Phaedrus or Timaeus) spoke of souls falling from a primordial state and being entombed in bodies, from which they must be liberated. Later Platonic thinkers like Plotinus (a near-contemporary of Origen) would explicitly liken the spiritual journey to a purification of multiplicity back into unity – the many layers of reality being stripped away until only the One remains. It is easy to see how this philosophy could fertilize a theology in which all differentiation (including the distinction between saved and damned, or even between Creator and creation) might be softened in view of an ultimate reunion. Origen drank deeply from this well. He believed that behind scriptural truths there lay a harmonious cosmic order intelligible through Greek philosophical concepts. Thus, the philosophical roots of Origen’s universalism are found in:

• Platonic Metaphysics: This assumed the eternality of the divine and the transience of the material, making it fitting (in Origen’s mind) that in the final consummation, all that is gross and material would be left behind so that spiritual unity with God alone subsists. (Origen’s universalism takes for granted the Platonic notion that matter is a temporary condition to be ultimately overcome.)
  
• The Cyclical/Restorative Concept: An ancient Greek notion (found in Stoicism as well) that history might be cyclic, returning to its beginning. Origen adapted this into a Christian framework: the end of the ages would be “like the beginning”, a return to the original harmony when all creatures adored God perfectly. This is, in fact, the very idea later condemned by the Church as the “fabulous pre-existence of souls” and the “monstrous restoration” that follows from it .
  
• Monism of the Good: The conviction that since God is the source of all being, nothing that truly is can be forever cut off from Him. If any creature remained eternally in rebellion (hell), that would seem to mar the total victory of the One. Origen was driven by a kind of metaphysical optimism that God’s goodness would ultimately leave no corner of creation untouched by redemption.
  

In sum, Origen’s thought inherited a cosmic scope from Hellenic philosophy: he saw the drama of salvation in the broadest terms, spanning a pre-cosmic fall and a post-cosmic restoration. The Platonic longing for the One profoundly shaped Origen’s expectations of what God’s plan must be — namely, a plan in which all multiplicity (including the multiplicity of heaven and hell, reward and punishment) is overcome in the end. Apokatastasis was effectively a Christianized answer to Plato’s yearning that all reality be resolved back into the unity of the Good. Origen’s genius was in trying to combine this with the Christian narrative of creation, fall, and salvation.

2. Origen’s Theological Synthesis: Pre-Existence, Fall, and Inevitable Restoration

Working with these philosophical instincts, Origen developed a grand theological narrative to explain the origin of the world, the nature of evil, and the destiny of creation. We can outline his synthesis as follows:

• Pre-existence of Souls and the Fall: Origen taught that in the beginning, God created a multitude of rational beings (logikoi) such as angels and souls, all originally pure and in close communion with God. These spirits were endowed with free will. Tragically, apart from one exception, each soul grew cold in its love for God to varying degrees. Through a mysterious failure of attention or a satiety of divine contemplation, they turned away from the divine Light. This turning constituted a “fall” before the material world existed. The one spirit who did not fall at all, Origen identified as the soul of Jesus Christ – uniquely united to the Word of God from the start. All the other spirits fell into different levels of estrangement: some fell only a little (retaining a higher nature, later to be angels), others more (becoming human souls), and the worst of all became demonic spirits. In Origen’s imaginative account, the diversity of creatures is due not to God’s original design of essentially different species, but to varying consequences of free will. As one later anathema summarized his view: those rational creatures who “cooled in the divine love” received gross bodies and became men, while those who attained the lowest degree of wickedness received darker bodies and became demons  . Conversely, those who fell least became angels. Thus, angels, humans, and demons are all of one race in Origen’s thought – differing only by their moral development and the density of the bodies or conditions they’ve acquired. This is a crucial point: Origen collapsed ontological distinctions into mere gradations of progress. Creation for him was one great continuum of rational beings sliding up or down by their use of free will.
  
• Creation of the Material World as Divine Mercy: In Origen’s theology, the physical cosmos with its temporal history came into being as a remedial stage for fallen spirits. Rather than annihilate the souls that fell, God in His mercy created the world of matter and time as a means of discipline and recovery. Souls were “embodied” in material form appropriate to their fall (hence the variety of corporeal creatures). Time itself was given so that change and repentance could become possible for those who turned away. Origen thus saw our life on earth (and even the punishments after death) as educative. All suffering has the goal of purification. God is the master pedagogue who uses everything – blessings and chastisements – to heal the fallen soul and restore it to its original state. (As Clement of Alexandria, Origen’s teacher, had said, God’s punishments are medicinal and purifying, not merely retributive. Origen wholeheartedly embraced this notion.) He found it unthinkable that God’s justice would be purely punitive forever; divine justice for him is always subordinate to divine mercy aiming at correction. Even the fire of hell, in Origen’s view, is the fire of God’s love which purges away sin like a refiner’s furnace cleansing gold. It hurts only so long as there is impurity to burn; once the soul is purified, the fire causes no pain. Thus, in Origen’s schema, punishment has an end once its purpose (purification) is achieved. He was explicit that the “eternal fire” of Scripture is not eternal in the sense of endless time, but eternal in God’s sense – a fire proceeding from the Eternal One for the purpose of correction, and which will last as long as is needed, not forever without end  .
  
• The Universal Restoration (Apokatastasis): The culmination of Origen’s theology is the doctrine that all rational creatures will eventually be restored to harmony with God. No matter how far a soul has fallen, since it retains free will and the divine image, it can (and in Origen’s view, will) be brought to repentance through God’s ages-long pedagogy. Origen believed that even Satan – the proudest and most fallen spirit – remains a rational creature who, once the blindness of his malice is overcome by the purifying sufferings of the aeons, could choose God again. He pointed to Scripture passages such as 1 Corinthians 15:28 (“God will be all in all”) and Acts 3:21 (“the times of the restitution of all things”) as hints of this total reconciliation. He envisaged a glorious finale to the world’s drama: every creature, from the highest angel to the lowliest demon, reunited under Christ’s lordship, willingly praising God. At that point, all distinctions of sinner/saint, angel/human/demon would disappear; all would share in the unity of deifying love. Origen described this state as the return to the archē (the beginning) – “the end will be like the beginning.” Matter itself will cease to exist as we know it (since it was only a temporary means); even resurrected bodies will become “spiritual” and eventually immaterial. In Origen’s daring vision, even hell itself will pass away, for it will have no one left to punish. In the final apokatastasis, God’s original purpose in creation is completely restored: His goodness fully triumphs, and “all things will be made new” in an unending Sabbath of peace.
  

It is important to note that Origen, at times, expressed some hesitation or ambiguity—he was a careful enough thinker to acknowledge the possibility of a will remaining obstinate. For example, in one place he speculated whether demons might in fact have lost the capacity to repent if their hearts had been completely hardened; in his Commentary on Romans, Origen even remarked that Lucifer “will not be converted, even at the end of time.” However, such statements are exceptions. The weight of Origen’s teaching and the impression on his followers was clearly that universal restoration is expected. Later generations (including many Origenists in the 4th century) certainly understood him to teach the salvation of all, including the devils. The Fifteenth Anathema of 553 reflects this, condemning anyone who “says that all reasonable beings will one day be united in one… and that in this pretended apokatastasis, spirits only will continue to exist as it was in the feigned pre-existence” . The very wording shows that the Church perceived Origen’s scheme: a reunification of all spirits, abolition of bodily existence, and the eradication of all sin and difference.

3. The Fundamental Problem with Origen’s Vision

Beneath the elegance of Origen’s system lies a grave ontological error. At heart, Origen’s doctrine of universal salvation blurs crucial distinctions: between Creator and creature, between the orders of created beings, and between moral good and evil. What begins as a seemingly compassionate theology (who wouldn’t wish all to be saved?) ends up unraveling the very fabric of Christian truth. The core problems can be outlined:

• From Creator–Creature Distinction to “Continuum” Ontology: Orthodox Christianity maintains an absolute distinction in kind between God (the uncreated Creator) and everything that is not God (created beings). Origen would verbally agree God is uncreated and creatures created; yet the logic of his universalism effectively turns the relationship into one of degree, not kind. In Origen’s view, all spiritual beings (even the human soul of Christ) are of the same fundamental order of reality, the same “stuff,” as it were—differing from God mainly in that God always remains at the top of the hierarchy. He did not clearly uphold the Christian teaching of creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) in its full implications. Evidence suggests Origen thought of creation as eternal or at least beginningless cycles, meaning God always had creatures co-existing with Him (albeit contingent on Him). Furthermore, by positing a past fall of souls from union with God and a future re-absorption of all into God, Origen blurs the line between the divine and the created. The end state in Origen’s mind approaches a kind of all-in-one fusion, where God will be “all in all” literally, and nothing distinct from God remains. This verges on a pantheistic ontology, where the Creator-creature distinction is functionally lost. Orthodox theology, by contrast, insists that even in eternal glory, creatures do not lose their created identity or the distinction of persons – the saints remain truly human even as they partake of the divine nature. Origen’s continuum ontology cannot allow such lasting otherness; it tends toward an ultimate unicity that swallows up creation.
  
• Mechanical Inevitable Salvation vs. Covenantal Synergy: In Scripture and apostolic tradition, salvation is presented as a relationship – a covenant of love between God and human persons, involving mutual consent and cooperation (synergy). “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” says the Lord; “if anyone opens to me, I will come in” (cf. Rev. 3:20). There is an if, a condition respecting human freedom. Origen, while acknowledging free will initially (in the fall), ultimately converts salvation into a mechanistic process. Given enough time and God’s corrective fire, every creature will eventually repent – in Origen’s scheme there is really no lasting “No” that a creature can give to God. Despite Origen’s own words that God saves no one against their will, his doctrine of apokatastasis functionally means the will’s opposition will certainly be overcome sooner or later. This makes salvation less of a partnership and more of an inevitability built into the structure of the universe. Essentially, Origen’s God guarantees that all wills shall freely turn to Him in the end – a perplexing notion, since a guaranteed free choice is a contradiction in terms. The drama of covenantal love, where God truly offers and we genuinely respond (or refuse), is undercut. Instead of “many are called, but few are chosen” (Matt 22:14), Origen’s view implies “all are called and all will sooner or later choose rightly.” In effect, the risk of freedom is an illusion, since no one can finally refuse God’s grace. This turns salvation into a quasi-automatic outcome of God’s plan, rather than a lived relationship requiring ongoing assent. It is no accident that Origen’s followers (and modern universalists) often downplay the clear Scriptural warnings about eternal loss – they treat them as hyperbole or temporary measures to scare sinners straight. Thus, salvation in Origenism ceases to be the dynamic interplay of divine grace and human freedom, and becomes a kind of fixed metaphysical principle: as gravity makes a stone fall, so God’s love must draw all souls back eventually. This severely diminishes the dignity of persons as truly free agents.
  
• Dissolution of Moral Seriousness: Perhaps the most alarming consequence of Origen’s universalism is how it redefines evil and freedom. If all sins will ultimately be corrected and all sinners purified, then evil is essentially just ignorance or transient folly, not a fundamental turning of the creature against the Creator. Origen indeed tended to view sin as a result of not seeing God clearly—the soul fell out of boredom or distraction, not out of outright malice toward God. The demons, in his view, are not so much rebels who cry “Non serviam” (“I will not serve”) as they are wayward siblings who will eventually “learn their lesson.” This conception empties evil of its weight as a truly destructive reality. In Scripture, evil is linked to the willful pride of creatures (Lucifer’s fall, Adam’s disobedience) and causes real rupture that, if not healed by repentance, leads to eternal death. Origen’s system cannot accept an eternal tragedy, so it reframes all evil as curable ignorance. In doing so, it tacitly exonerates the will. The sinner is not, in the end, choosing to reject God (for that would have final consequences); he is merely mistaken and will “come around.” This is a radically different moral ontology. It suggests that freedom is a temporary misunderstanding, a kind of child’s tantrum in time, rather than an awesome and permanent orientation of the self either toward the True Good or away from Him. The possibility that a soul might irrevocably choose against God—locking itself in pride—is ruled out by a theory that presumes everyone is rational enough to choose God eventually. Such a view, ironically, diminishes the true price of love. Love, to be meaningful, must be freely given and can be freely refused. Origen’s theology effectively says no one will finally refuse, which, intentionally or not, implies that the freedom to reject God is not real or at least not enduring. In short, salvation becomes a necessity built into the universe: grace is irresistible not in the Calvinist sense of coercion, but in the sense that the creature’s will must align with God’s by the end of the ages. This is no longer a healing of the will (through cooperation with grace), but an erasure of the will’s ability to say “no” forever. The will is “free” only within the bounds of time; beyond that, God’s love allegedly overmasters every will unfailingly. Such “freedom” is an illusion. It reduces creatures to pawns in a cosmic cycle where their final yes to God is predetermined.
  

This mechanical view of salvation was explicitly rejected by the Church: in A.D. 543, an anathema drafted under Emperor Justinian (ratified by local synods and reflected in the 553 council) stated: “If anyone says or holds that the punishment of demons and impious men is only temporary and will one day have an end… and that restoration (apokatastasis) will take place of demons and impious men, let him be anathema” . The Church perceived that at stake was the reality of judgment and responsibility. By denying the finality of the choice against God, Origen’s doctrine denied the full import of human and angelic freedom.

In sum, Origen’s universalism, for all its lofty motivations, collapses the rich topology of Christian ontology into a flat plane. Hierarchies become leveled: angels, men, and demons are all the same creature in different costumes; Christ’s human nature is just another soul that did not fall; God’s transcendence is muddled with creation in an endless coming-and-going. Good and evil become a continuum of enlightenment vs. ignorance rather than two fundamentally opposed orientations of the will. The drama of salvation loses its covenantal reciprocity and becomes an inescapable universal law of return. There is a straight line from Origen’s apokatastasis to later heresies (and modern ideologies) that treat God’s grace as something automatic and freedom as something nominal.

To illustrate the point starkly: St. Augustine, a fierce opponent of universalism, remarked that Origen’s theory even included bizarre corollaries like the idea of multiple falls and restorations (a cyclic universe) which would mean the saints in heaven are not secure – they might fall in the next cycle! Augustine pointed out that in trying to be “merciful” to the damned, Origen not only misread Scripture but robbed the saved of true security, giving them a “false happiness” with no “fearless assurance of eternal blessedness” . In other words, Origen’s collapse of distinctions ultimately means heaven itself is not truly heaven, since the possibility of another fall would loom. Heaven with the prospect of losing it is misery, as one commentator summarized Augustine. Such are the absurdities that result from this ontological error. What Origen presented as an overflow of God’s mercy (none damned forever) is revealed as a deep incoherence: it makes a mockery of both God’s justice and man’s freedom, and even of God’s mercy itself (for mercy no longer truly saves from a real peril; it simply delays a non-existent peril).

Having diagnosed Origen’s fundamental mistakes in ontology and anthropology, we now turn to specific questions that arise: particularly, the nature of angels and demons and why Origen’s universalism fails to account for their reality. Understanding angelic freedom will further illuminate why the apokatastasis is an ontological impossibility, not just a theological error.

III. The Ontological Error: Confusing Hierarchy with Equality

Origen’s system, as we have seen, essentially reduces all creatures to one level playing field, differing only by degree of holiness. In doing so, it confuses hierarchy with equality. Orthodox Christianity, however, has a profoundly hierarchical vision of reality—not in the sense of oppression or inequality of worth, but in the sense of a divinely ordered scale of being, where distinction and diversity are intrinsic to beauty and truth. In this section, we contrast the Orthodox ontology of Creator and creation (and the myriad grades of created life) with Origen’s flattening of these distinctions. We will show that what Origen considered mere gradations are in fact qualitative differences willed by God, and that confusing the two leads directly to his doctrinal errors.

1. Orthodox Ontology: Participation in God’s Energies, Not Identity of Essence

In classical Christian metaphysics (articulated especially in the Eastern patristic tradition), all created being is a participation in the being of God, but always as a creature, never as God by nature. Reality is understood in terms of analogy, not univocity. This means: God’s mode of being is infinitely above our mode of being; yet there is an analogy (a correspondence) because we are made in His image and sustained by His power. We do not have existence on our own – at every moment, to exist is to participate in the “upholding” presence of God. As St. Paul said, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). The Church Fathers expressed this with the distinction between God’s essence and God’s energies. God in His inner essence (ousia) remains utterly transcendent, beyond all creation and utterly simple and unknowable. However, God comes forth to created beings through His energies (operations, graces)—His power, wisdom, love, light, etc. These energies are truly God (not mere created effects), and through them the creatures can participate in God without ever absorbing His essence. St. Basil the Great explains: “The operations (energies) are various, but the essence is simple. We know our God from His operations, but do not undertake to approach His essence. His operations come down to us, but His essence remains beyond our reach.” This ensures two things: First, that God utterly transcends the world (maintaining Creator/creature distinction); second, that the world truly can commune with God (since His energies really deify the saints without turning them into another “god” in essence).

In an orthodox ontology, being is hierarchical and analogical. God is Being itself (He told Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”); creatures have being by gift. Angels, humans, animals, plants, inanimate matter — all have different degrees of participating in God’s perfections. The hierarchy of angels described by Pseudo-Dionysius (Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones… down to ordinary angels) is one example of this gradation. Dionysius used the term “hierarchy” to mean a sacred order, an arrangement of reality where each level receives enlightenment from above and passes it down below . Importantly, hierarchy is not a mere difference of moral achievement; it is a difference of nature and office. A Seraph is not merely an angel who has tried harder – it is a different order of being with a particular proximity to God. Likewise, human beings are a distinct order, a unique synthesis of material and spiritual (and our destiny, if we persevere in grace, is to rise above the angels in some respects because of Christ’s Incarnation elevating humanity). The demons, on the other hand, are fallen angels — they lost their holy office and brightness, but they remain of angelic nature (which is higher than ours in natural order, though now perverted). The analogy of being means that even though all these creatures exist, existence is not a univocal concept. A stone exists, an animal exists, an angel exists, and God exists – but they do not exist in the same way or fullness. God alone has existence by nature (and is existence itself); angels have a high degree of life (pure spirits, immortal by grace, intellective and free); humans have a composite existence (embodied spirits, mortal by nature but capable of immortality by grace); animals have life and sense but not reason; etc. Each lower level reflects God in a more limited way, each higher level in a more splendid way.

Orthodox theology also draws careful distinctions within created reality: e.g., between person (hypostasis) and nature, and between nature and will. These distinctions were hammered out in the Christological controversies and later in debates on the will (Monothelitism). Briefly, nature (essence) answers “what a thing is,” whereas person answers “who it is.” All humans share one nature, but each of us is a unique person. Likewise, the Holy Trinity is one divine Nature in three divine Persons. Why does this matter here? Because Origen lacked these later clarifications and so made crude identifications that orthodox theology would avoid. For instance, Origen seems to have thought of the “soul of Christ” as a created hypostasis that became one with the Logos, leading him to blur the lines between Christ’s unique identity and other rational souls. He also did not clearly distinguish the natural will (the faculty of choosing, rooted in one’s nature) from the gnomic will (the deliberative, deciding aspect used by persons). Thus, he could imagine that all wills would eventually make the same choice (since all share a rational nature that “must” tend to God), not grasping that personal freedom can introduce an ineluctable difference in outcome. Origen’s failure to appreciate the person/nature distinction in the Trinity led him into subordinationism (thinking the Son and Spirit were of lesser degree than the Father – an error of hierarchy perhaps opposite to his later over-equality of creatures). In sum, orthodox ontology maintains both the unity of things in God and the irreducible distinctions that give structure and meaning. We are one in Christ, but not all the same in Christ.

To put it poetically: Orthodoxy sees creation as an ordered symphony. There are countless notes and harmonies, distinct instruments and sections, high melodies and deep bass lines – all contributing to one great music under the direction of God. Hierarchy is the structure of this divine music: it is what allows a rich polyphony instead of a monotonous unison. There is a “hierarchy of love” in which each creature, by being truly itself as God intended, gives glory back in a unique way. The highest archangel and the simplest child each reflect God, but differently. The ultimate Christian hope is not that all differences will be erased, but that all discord will be erased so that differences can resonate in perfect concord.

2. Origen’s Collapse of Hierarchy into Gradation

Origen’s theological vision, unfortunately, collapsed sacred hierarchy into a mere quantitative gradation. As described earlier, Origen posited that all rational creatures are fundamentally of one species or kind – the spiritual intelligence (nous). The differences between an archangel, a man, and a demon are, in Origen’s schema, like the differences between students in a classroom: some are more advanced, some lagging behind, but all are essentially doing the same curriculum. This is a flattening of ontology. Instead of different kinds of creatures, Origen had one kind at different stages.

We see this clearly in his teaching on the interchangeability of angelic and human states. He speculated that souls can transmigrate or change status – an angel might become a human if it cools in love, a human may become an angel if it improves, a demon might one day climb back up to being an angel. Anathema #5 of 553 AD specifically condemns this idea: “If anyone shall say that a psychic condition has come from an angelic or archangelic state, and moreover that a demoniac and a human condition has come from a psychic condition, and that from a human state they may become again angels and demons… let him be anathema.” The condemnation indicates how Origen “reduces hierarchy to degree.” In treating an angel, a man, and a demon as if they were just different rungs on one ladder, Origen denied the proper nature of each order of being. The Church, on the other hand, affirms that an angel is by nature an angel, a being that from the moment of its creation is distinct from a human soul. While a soul may grow in holiness to equal an angel in purity or even surpass some angels in glory (as the Blessed Virgin Mary is exalted above all angels, for example), a human soul does not become an angel in nature. “One star differeth from another star in glory” (1 Cor 15:41), and so too each class of being differs in glory – but a star does not turn into a planet, an angel does not turn into a human or vice versa. Origen’s continuum erases these God-ordained distinctions.

Even more seriously, Origen’s leveling impulse denied the qualitative abyss between Creator and creature. While Origen surely did not think creatures become God in essence, his language and framework tend toward a blurring. For example, he theorized that all spirits might be “united with the Word of God in all respects” so that the Kingdom of Christ would have an end – implying that at the final restoration Christ’s distinct mediatorial Kingdom dissolves into God being all in all, with no remaining hypostatic distinctions. One of the anathematisms (#12) rejects the notion that “the heavenly Powers and all men and the Devil and evil spirits are united with the Word of God in all respects… and that the Kingdom of Christ shall have an end.” This was attacking the idea that in apokatastasis, even Christ’s role as King and Judge ceases, as everything is just merged back into simple unity. Orthodox theology insists, by contrast, that Christ’s Kingdom is everlasting (Luke 1:33) and that the hypostases (Persons) of the Trinity remain distinct even as God becomes all in all. Origen’s error was effectively to imagine the eschaton as a state where all particularity evaporates: creatures lose their particular modes of being (no bodies, no individual names, etc.) and are just one uniform category again; even Christ’s unique dignity (as Incarnate God-man and Judge) fades, since He was just the “first restored” among many. In trying to exalt the final unity, Origen demoted the richness of diversity – a richness that God Himself established.

The results of Origen’s collapse of hierarchy are doctrinally disastrous:

• Christology is compromised: Origen considered Christ’s human soul to be one of the created spirits that simply never fell and remained perfectly attached to the Word. Thus, Christ is no different in kind from us—only in degree (He loved God much more than we did). This robs Christ of the uniqueness of His person. In orthodoxy, the Son of God assumed a human soul and body, uniting the created nature to His divine Person; He was not merely one “classmate” who got everything right. Origen’s view nearly makes Christ a fellow creature who just managed not to sin. Such subordination of Christ’s dignity was firmly rejected by later orthodox Fathers. (Indeed, Origen’s speculations about Christ’s soul pre-existing and perhaps being “first created” were also anathematized in 553, as they veered from the apostolic understanding of Christ’s eternal divine personhood.)
  
• Sin and holiness become quantitative, not qualitative: In Origen’s collapse, an evil spirit and an angel differ only by how far along the spectrum of return they are. Evil is not a fundamentally perverse stance of will; it’s just “lesser good.” This is essentially a univocal view of goodness — everyone is on the same line of being, just more or less good. The orthodox view is analogical — goodness in a devil is not the same as goodness in a saint; in the devil it’s a twisted vestige, in a saint it’s a radiant participation. By treating them as points on one line, Origen failed to reckon with the radical either/or of moral choice that Scripture emphasizes (“he who does not gather with Me scatters,” “light has no fellowship with darkness,” etc.). Origen’s demon is just a very ignorant brother, whereas Christ in the Gospels calls the devil “a murderer from the beginning… not standing in the truth” (John 8:44) – language of ongoing rebellion, not merely ignorance.
  

To put it plainly, Origen’s theology did not take evil seriously as rebellion, nor holiness seriously as a permanent love-choice. Everything became a temporary lesson in an upward climb. In doing so, he downplayed the mystery of iniquity. The Holocaust of World War II, or the will of Satan to corrupt and destroy souls—these are not merely mistakes to be corrected; they manifest a profound opposition to God’s goodness. The Church teaches that such opposition can harden into permanent hell by the creature’s own obstinacy. Origen’s system couldn’t accommodate that, because it lacked the framework for irreducible differences.

• Freedom loses its drama (again): By collapsing hierarchy, Origen sees all wills as eventually alike. If all creatures are of one kind, and all tend toward one end, then freedom is only a matter of time. There is no possibility of a definitive self-determination that sets a soul apart (either as a forever-saint or a forever-fiend). Yet Christianity—from the Old Testament (“I set before you life and death, choose life,” Deut. 30:19) to Jesus’ stark parables of sheep and goats—presents the choice for or against God as the defining drama of creation. One either becomes by grace a partaker of the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4) or one rejects grace and withers. Origen’s flattening implies everyone is of one nature and will all make it to the same place; freedom is thus a passing phase, not an ongoing capacity to stand in truth or fall forever.
  

In summary, Origen’s collapse of hierarchy into mere equality-of-degree empties the cosmos of its sacred order and its existential stakes. By denying the “qualitative abyss” between Creator and creature, he tends toward making creation a necessary emanation of God that must return (a kind of Neoplatonic emanationism). By denying the fixed differences in creaturely orders, he makes all creation one homogeneous mass that simply sorts itself out in time. It is a short step from here to saying even good and evil are not truly different in kind but part of one spectrum – a step some of Origen’s followers took in practice, as they viewed the devil as simply a wayward son who will come home.

The result of this leveling can be seen in how Origen’s theology reinterprets key elements of Christian doctrine:

• Evil becomes ignorance rather than rebellion: As noted, Origen viewed sinners (human or demonic) as curably ignorant. St. Gregory of Nyssa, who was influenced by Origen, uses the image of purifying fire to destroy evil as if it were dross mixed in with gold . The language there is almost impersonal—evil is not a proud fist raised against God, but an impurity to be burned off. This conception can foster compassion, but it also dangerously minimizes the willfulness of sin. Scripture and the Fathers also speak of sin as enmity towards God, a contest of wills. Origen’s error was to so emphasize God’s goodness as to implicitly deny that any creature could finally resist that goodness (for who, once truly enlightened, would not love the Good?). This presumes that all sin is due to lack of enlightenment. But biblical revelation shows some sin is done in the full light of knowledge (e.g. the devil and his angels, who knew God and yet rejected Him). That sort of evil cannot be reduced to ignorance. It is a mystery of lawlessness, a dark, self-chosen privation of good without excuse. Origen’s ontology had no room for a freely willed, unending No to God; thus it recast all No’s as provisional and surmountable by more knowledge or suffering.
  
• Freedom becomes a temporary lapse rather than an eternal decision: Because Origen saw creaturely free will as something that inevitably would align with God given enough time, he reduced the permanence of free choice. In Origen’s view, a will that says “no” to God does so only because it hasn’t fully understood; given infinite time and pedagogical correction, it will say “yes.” Thus the will’s “no” is never final; freedom is essentially the freedom to delay one’s inevitable conversion. Again, the orthodox view differs: freedom is the God-given power to make a final choice—either the eternal yes of the Blessed Virgin Mary (“be it unto me according to Thy word”) or the eternal no of Satan (“I will not serve”). Time is the theater for making this choice, and at death (or definitively at the final judgment) the choice is sealed by God’s own decree. “Where the tree falls, there it will lie” (Eccl. 11:3). By making all refusals temporary misunderstandings, Origen took away the eternal significance of freedom. In effect, creatures in his system are destined to be saved, which is a kind of subtle determinism contradictory to genuine free will.
  
• Salvation becomes necessity, not gift: Ultimately, if one embraces Origen’s apokatastasis, being saved is less a gracious gift that one must humbly receive and persevere in, and more a built-in feature of the universe. God has to save everyone, otherwise He’d “lose” the cosmic game. Some modern universalists argue similarly: “If anyone is lost forever, then God is not truly God or truly love.” They put God in a logical box where He must redeem every last soul, or else be a failure. This is a far cry from the Gospel’s presentation of salvation as unmerited mercy that can be accepted or spurned. In Origen’s plan, salvation is effectively the erasure of the creature’s dissent. Over ages, God’s love is like an acid that will dissolve even the hardest heart. This may sound poetic, but consider what it implies: the identity and choice of the creature ultimately do not count. If someone, God forbid, wanted to remain in hatred, Origen would say that’s impossible in the long run — they will have to capitulate to love. But forced love is not love. If one cannot say “no,” the “yes” is meaningless. Universalism makes salvation a cosmic law, not a loving relationship, and that changes its character entirely.
  

In light of this analysis, we see that Origen’s confusion of hierarchy with equality is at the root of these distortions. The very structure of Christian reality—Creator vs. creature, angel vs. man vs. beast, virtue vs. vice—is destabilized. The flattening of these distinctions did indeed lead Origen (and leads modern universalists) to misconceive God, creation, and redemption in fundamental ways.

IV. The Ontology of the Demons and the Finality of Their Choice

One of the most striking (and controversial) aspects of Origen’s universalism was his inclusion of demons and even Satan in the promise of eventual salvation. Origen taught that no rational creature, not even the devil, would resist God’s love forever. This view is flatly contradicted by Scripture and Tradition, which consistently affirm the eternal damnation of Satan and the evil spirits (cf. Matthew 25:41 – “the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels”). To grasp why the Church insists that the fallen angels cannot and will not be saved, we must delve into the nature of angelic beings and how their freedom operates. There is a profound difference between the mode of will of angels and that of humans. Origen failed to appreciate this, treating angelic falls as if they were reversible like human sins. Orthodox theology, however, elucidates that the angelic choice is of a different order: once made, it is fixed forever. Let us explore this difference and its implications.

1. Angelic Nature: Will in an Atemporal Instant

Angels, according to Scripture and patristic teaching, are purely spiritual creatures: “an angel, then, is an intelligent essence, in perpetual motion, with free will, incorporeal,” writes St. John of Damascus . They were created by God outside of the earthly temporal sequence – that is, their creation and probation occurred in the spiritual realm, not in the flow of material history as we know it. While angels can act in time (they can enter our history as messengers, etc.), their own mode of existence is not bounded by time in the way ours is. They do not experience past and future as we do; their intellect and will operate with a swiftness and immediacy beyond human comprehension.

What does this mean for their choice? The consensus of orthodox theologians (East and West) is that the angels were created good, but with freedom, and were given a kind of “moment of decision” to affirm God or reject Him. Some of the highest angels, led by Lucifer, rebelled through pride – “I will ascend, I will make myself like the Most High” (cf. Isaiah 14:13–14, applied to the devil by Christian tradition). Others, led by Michael, remained faithful: “Michael and his angels fought against the dragon… and the great dragon was thrown down” (Rev 12:7–9). Importantly, the angelic decision for or against God was not a drawn-out process as human conversion can be. It was a singular, atemporal act of the will, made with full clarity of intellect. As purely spiritual intellects, the angels were not subject to the confusion, discursiveness, or changeability that humans (a composite of spirit and matter) experience. When an angel chose, it did so with a totality of resolve that admitted no oscillation.

St. John Damascene explains it thus: “It [the angel’s nature] is not susceptible of repentance because it is incorporeal. For it is owing to the weakness of his body that man comes to have repentance.” This is a critical point. Repentance (metanoia) – a change of mind/heart – is possible for us because we are in time, we learn through suffering, and we have the humility of bodily weakness. An angel, being none of those things (not in time in the same way, incapable of physical suffering, not subject to forgetfulness or ignorance in the way we are), does not change its mind. Damascene bluntly states elsewhere: “Note, further, that what in the case of man is death is a fall in the case of angels. For after the fall there is no possibility of repentance for them, just as there is none for men after death.” (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, II.4) . In other words, the first choice of an angel was also its final choice, analogously to how at the moment of death a human soul’s fundamental orientation is sealed.

The angelic fall, then, is not a “mistake” that can be undone; it is an ontological commitment of the creature’s being against God. The angels who fell became by that very act “demons” – not just in name but in corrupted nature. They fixed themselves in opposition to the source of all goodness, thus warping their once-bright intellects into darkness and their wills into malice. There is a qualitative change: although they retain the natural gifts of an angel (immortality, intellect, etc.), they are now perpetually directed toward evil. Jesus testified to this when He said of the devil, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him” (John 8:44). Notice the present tense and finality: “there is no truth in him.” The devil’s fall wasn’t a temporary stumble; it was the definitive self-removal from truth.

Why would God create beings whose one wrong choice would damn them forever? This is a mystery of God’s providence, but we can venture an answer: because such is the nature of spirit when not “tempered” by matter and time. God willed to create a whole range of beings, some of whom exist in the eternal “moment” of the spiritual realm. In that realm, decisions don’t get mulligans, because the clarity of self-determination is so high. The angels had their trial, their “exercise of free will,” and those who fell did so with eyes open. Their fall is thus an eternal sin, an unending rejection. It’s not that God arbitrarily refuses them mercy; it’s that they will not repent and indeed cannot will to repent without undoing their very identity formed by their choice. As C.S. Lewis aptly put it, “The doors of hell are locked on the inside.” The demons hate God so much that even confronted with His power and justice, they prefer hatred to humbling themselves to ask forgiveness. After all, they knew God directly and still rebelled – what more could be revealed to change their mind? Unlike erring humans, they cannot plead ignorance of God’s majesty. Their sin is the sin against the Holy Spirit in its pure form: knowing the goodness, they called it evil and embraced evil as their good.

In summary, the ontology of demons is that of creatures fixed in negation. They are still under God’s sovereignty (He uses even their malice for His ends in history, and they will ultimately be stripped of all power), but as persons they are eternally separated by their own volition. Origen’s suggestion that demons will eventually be saved would require that this fixed state somehow unfixes. That would either mean time somehow is reintroduced to their condition to allow change (which would violate the nature of the angelic realm), or that God forcibly changes them (which would violate their personal free will and identity). Neither is possible within the bounds of how God created reality.

2. Incompatibility of Angelic and Human Modes of Will: Why Repentance is for Men, Not Devils

The profound difference between human and angelic freedom must be emphasized. Human beings sin and can repent, because our decisions, while significant, are made in a context of partial knowledge, flux, and weakness. We learn by trial and error. We are born in ignorance and (hopefully) grow in truth. Even the most saintly human is prone to mistakes and the most wicked human might feel pangs of conscience and convert. Our will is “mobile” (to use an Aristotelian term) as long as we live: it can turn from vice to virtue or vice versa. We are composite creatures — our soul uses the body as an instrument, and the very passage of time, the experiences of life, can profoundly alter our perspective. Thus God’s mercy gives us the opportunity in life (and, according to Catholic teaching, even after death in purgatory for those who die in God’s grace but still imperfect) to change. “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2) — in this earthly “day” we can repent. After death, however, the human soul enters its definitive state; the time of probation is over.

For the angels, however, there never was a temporal period of wandering and gradual conversion. Their choice was made in a single spiritual instant. As Damascene noted, “what in the case of man is death is a fall in the case of angels”. The angels had, as it were, one “moment” to choose — once that moment passed (the fall for some, the confirmation in grace for others), their wills were locked on course. The holy angels were “confirmed” in goodness by the grace of God, such that they are now incapable of falling (not by their nature, but by God’s grace rewarding their fidelity – they are “incapable of change, not by nature but by grace”). The fallen angels, by contrast, are locked in obstinacy.

One might ask: could not God’s grace reach even a demon and soften his will? Is anything impossible for God? Here we confront the paradox of omnipotent Love and the free creature. God’s grace is indeed all-powerful in itself, but God in creating free persons allows His grace to be resisted. With humans, He can overcome resistance gradually (like Saul of Tarsus being knocked off his horse by Christ – yet even Saul had to willingly cooperate after that). But with demons, the resistance is absolute, final. It’s not that God couldn’t forcibly bend a demon’s will, but if He did, He would annihilate the demon as a personal agent. The demon would cease to be itself. In that sense, to “save” a demon against its will would be an act of ontological violence. It would negate the demon as a rational creature. God respects the ontological reality of the natures He created. Just as God will not force a human’s conversion (He urges, inspires, sometimes severely chastises to prompt repentance – but He does not eliminate our freedom), so with angels He will not undo their permanent choice. Divine omnipotence is not a coercive machine; it operates in accord with the nature of things and the moral order He Himself established.

The Incarnation and Redemption were aimed at humanity, not at angels. “For surely it is not angels that He helps, but He helps the offspring of Abraham” (Hebrews 2:16). Christ took on human nature to save humans. The angels were on their own in that their test was individual (each angel chose, and those who fell had no Redeemer to lift them up). This is a point often made by the Fathers: they marvel at God’s condescension to save lowly man while leaving the prouder angelic nature to itself. Why? Precisely because man fell in deception and weakness, whereas the devil fell in clear malice. There is a kind of fitting justice: the one who fell by pride without any tempter (Lucifer) is not given a second chance, whereas man who was tempted by another and fell is given a second chance through the New Adam, Christ. So long as we live, “a broken and contrite heart, God will not despise” (Ps 51:17). But the demons do not have contrite hearts, nor could they at this point without an outright miracle that would overturn the logic of salvation history.

Origen’s error was treating demons like misguided humans. In his view, a demon was just a particularly bad soul who through eons of chastisement would eventually wise up. However, as we’ve shown, by the very mode of their existence the fallen angels’ “minds” are made up for good. If one were to ask a demon, “Do you want to be saved and enjoy God’s love?” he would respond with the same hate that he’s had since the fall. The demon’s will is eternally turned inward, curved in on pride, envy, and hatred of the goodness of God. Punishment doesn’t bring a demon to repentance; it only inflames further rage. (We catch a glimpse of this even in human behavior: there are some people who, when justly punished or corrected, do not repent but double down in bitterness. Multiply that obstinacy by an angelic intellect and you have the devil.) So incompatible are the angelic and human modes of willing that Origen’s idea of universal salvation encompassing demons ends up implicitly denying the reality of demons. It treats them as if they were just like us. But a demon is not a man. A demon does not have the pathos of human weakness that can evoke God’s pity in the same way. This is perhaps why Origen and especially his later followers (like Evagrius) flirted with a kind of Origenist Gnosticism where the distinction between angels and human souls blurred – some Origenists basically thought human souls were fallen angels. The Church condemned that as well. We insist: humans and angels are distinct orders. Christ’s saving work united men and God in His own person; it did not unite devils and God. The devils are left as a fearful warning of what the misuse of creaturely excellence can lead to.

3. Why Universal Salvation for Demons is Impossible

Given the above, we can state categorically: the restoration of fallen angels is an impossibility – not because God lacks power or mercy, but because the demons’ state of being precludes it. To “save” the demons, God would have to overturn the very framework of freedom and justice He has ordained. Several points drive this home:

• Demons cannot repent: As shown, repentance is not in their toolkit. They have no bodies to mortify, no new information to learn that they didn’t know, and no humility with which to bow down. Their wills are like hardened concrete. Origen’s vision of them “learning their lesson” after sufficient punishment is at odds with the nature of angelic knowledge. The demons already knew the lesson (they saw God’s goodness!) and rejected it. There is no ignorance to fix; there is only pride to break, and that pride is unbreakable without destroying the personality that holds it. When almighty God, in the person of Jesus, cast out demons during His earthly ministry, the demons recognized Him (e.g., “I know who You are, the Holy One of God!” Mark 1:24) yet they did not love Him. They cringed, they obeyed His commands to depart, but they didn’t beg to become good. They sometimes begged not to be tormented or sent to the abyss before time (Luke 8:31), showing they fear punishment but still do not repent. That is very telling: fear of pain is not repentance. A demon would accept being less tormented if possible, but it will not therefore love God. Thus, even if God in Origen’s scenario reduced their torments gradually as they “improve,” their “improvement” is only out of self-interest, not true contrition or charity. They might conceivably capitulate externally (imagine a demon saying, “Fine, I’ll obey, just stop the pain!”) but that is not salvation. Salvation is a transformation of the will from within, which a demon’s will won’t undergo. A will confirmed in evil can grovel under force but remains evil at its core. God is not interested in forced, feigned obedience; that would not glorify Him or make the creature happy either. So universalism’s idea of hell purging the evil out of demons fails – the evil is in their very will, and fire cannot melt a frozen “no.”
  
• To nullify their will is to annihilate them: If, per impossibile, God were to “reset” a demon’s will to a state of grace, that demon would not be the same personal agent that had previously rejected Him. It would essentially be a new creation that just shares the name of the old. (It’s analogous to extreme cases of human personality change: if someone’s memory and character were entirely wiped and replaced, we wouldn’t consider the original person to have been saved or converted; that person effectively died and another took his place.) Now, God does change people’s hearts – but always through their cooperation (even if minimal). He respects the continuity of the person. With demons, there is zero cooperation, so the only way to “change” them would be unilaterally overriding them. That would violate their creaturely integrity that God Himself bestowed. It would be the equivalent of God saying, “I un-create who you are and make you into something else that will love Me.” God does not do that; He allows the wicked to cling to their self even if it means misery. Love forced is not love. Salvation, to be salvation, must heal the will, not abolish it. The will of demons does not want to be healed. Therefore, God’s respect for their ontological freedom leaves them where they chose to be.
  
• Divine Justice and the order of the cosmos demand a final separation: The entire narrative of salvation history points to a final sorting out: “Let both grow together until the harvest; at harvest time I will tell the reapers: Gather the weeds into bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn” (Matt 13:30). Christ explains that the weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the harvest is “the end of the age” when the angels will remove all evil from His Kingdom (Matt 13:38–41). The Book of Revelation vividly depicts the ultimate defeat of Satan: “And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur… and will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Rev 20:10). This is the revealed fate of demons. If one were to imagine apokatastasis occurring after “forever and ever,” one ends up emptying God’s judgment of truth. Origen’s followers argued those texts mean “for ages of ages,” i.e. a long but finite time. The Church understood them as literally eternal. If they were not eternal, the symmetry of God’s plan collapses: why would Christ bother to become man and die to save us in this age if unending ages of purgation would automatically fix everything anyway? The stakes of history would be illusory. Also, the victory of God in Scripture is shown by permanently isolating evil, not rehabilitating the devil. “Nothing unclean shall enter the New Jerusalem” (Rev 21:27). God’s mercy is offered now; at the consummation, mercy gives way to justice for those who spurned mercy. Universalism tries to extend mercy into eternity for those who never accepted it, but that nullifies justice. As the Catholic Encyclopedia succinctly observed, the universalist doctrine “involves a purely natural scheme of divine justice and of redemption,” essentially a mechanistic process rather than a moral resolution . Orthodoxy insists both justice and mercy are fulfilled: mercy for the repentant, justice for the unrepentant. This is “ontologically serious,” to use our earlier phrase, because it ascribes real significance to moral choices. To erase hell by emptying it (especially emptying it of demons, the very instigators of evil) would be to stage a cosmic drama that, after much sound and fury, ends with “no harm, no foul.” That would reduce the gravitas of God’s governance to a giant pedagogical game where ultimately even the most obstinate traitors are let back in the castle. But the revelation given to the Church is that outside the City of God stand “the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters…” (Rev 22:15) – a symbolic way to say there will indeed be an “outside” where those who would not be healed by grace remain by their own will. And chief among those “outside” are the devil and his angels (cf. Matt 25:41). This outer darkness is not an arbitrary prison; it is simply what being outside of God looks like. The demons chose to be out, and out they shall remain.
  

Therefore, to “save” demons would mean to undo the fabric of God’s revealed plan. It would erase the stark contrast that final Judgment establishes between the Kingdom of Light and the kingdom of darkness. It would mean that the very ones for whom everlasting fire was “prepared” (Matt 25:41) don’t stay in it. Can we imagine at the Last Day, Christ says, “Depart from Me, accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” and then at some later “day” God says to the devil, “Okay, you can come out now”? That would make Christ’s own prophecy untrue. It is unthinkable that the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, would have universally taught the perpetual damnation of demons for two millennia if at the end God intended to prove it wrong. Indeed, at the Fifth Ecumenical Council, the bishops judged the opposite idea anathema . The Church cannot err in such a way about a matter so serious and fundamental to eschatology.

Finally, beyond the theological reasoning, there is a spiritual intuition confirmed by the saints. Holy men and women who have battled demons (e.g. the Desert Fathers like St. Anthony) or who have had mystical insight into the spiritual realm concur that the demons are utterly malevolent and not in the least penitent. There are numerous accounts in hagiography of saints driving away demons by invoking God’s judgment on them. Never do these accounts feature the demon begging for forgiveness or showing any sign of remorse – only fear of saintly power or trickery to tempt the saint. The notion that behind the snarling devil there is somehow a prodigal son waiting to return runs contrary to lived spiritual experience. It is telling that no liturgy or prayer of the Church ever prays for the salvation of the devil or demons. We pray for all humans, even the most sinful, as long as they live. But the Church does not entreat God’s mercy on Satan. This silence is deafening – it signals that the Church knows such prayer is neither appropriate nor effective. “The son of perdition” (John 17:12) – originally referring to Judas – can analogously be applied to the devil and those definitively lost: they are, by their will, of perdition, not of life.

In conclusion, Origen’s hope for the redemption of the devil was a pious speculation gone astray. It stemmed from an inability to countenance an eternal dualism (God vs. anti-God forever). But the eternity of hell is not a dualism in the Manichean sense, because the damned (including demons) are not equal opposing forces to God – they are contained within His omnipotence, used against their will for His glory (even their punishment glorifies His justice), and they can do no harm in the fulfilled Kingdom. Their eternal existence in no way diminishes God’s all-in-all, because the “all” in whom God is all (1 Cor 15:28) refers to the redeemed creation, not to the damned. As St. Augustine noted, when interpreting that verse against Origen, God being all in all means sin will cease to exist in the universe of the saved; the wicked “will be outside of ‘all’,” Augustine says . The orthodox Church, in other words, expects hell to remain – not as an blemish on God’s victory, but as a solemn monument to creaturely freedom.

(We now turn from the purely spiritual realm back to the human drama, to examine how the logic of Origen’s universalism parallels modern moral relativism, and how the Church’s vision of freedom and judgment offers a true antidote.)

V. The Theological Mirror of Moral Relativism

Origen’s ancient error may seem abstract – all this talk of souls, demons, and the end of the world. But at its heart lies a very practical and contemporary issue: the flattening of moral truth in the name of a false compassion. In this section, we will draw the parallel between apokatastasis and modern moral relativism. We will show that both share a common move: the denial of real evil and real consequences, under the guise of a more “loving” or “open-minded” approach. What Origen did theologically (denying the permanence of damnation and thus ultimately denying the seriousness of sin), modern secular thought often does ethically (denying objective good and evil, treating all choices as equally valid). The result in both cases is a kind of nihilism – a pastoral nihilism in the Church and a cultural nihilism in society – where nothing truly matters because, in the end, “everyone goes to heaven,” or “everyone’s truth is right for them.” We must unmask this false mercy and show that it actually undermines both love and justice.

1. Parallels to Modern Thought: Universalism and Relativism

Consider first the claim of the moral relativist today: “There’s no absolute right or wrong, it’s all perspective. We shouldn’t ‘judge’ anyone’s lifestyle or choices – everyone has their own truth.” This ethos pervades late-modern Western culture. It often comes from a desire to be compassionate or inclusive. People think that by refusing to label any act or belief as outright evil, they are being kind and avoiding hurt. “Who am I to judge?” has become a slogan (even misusing Pope Francis’s humble remark in a specific context as a blanket abdication of moral evaluation). At its extreme, this mentality calls nothing sin. Instead of evil, one might speak of “differing values” or “psychological issues” or simply avoid the topic. Likewise, punishment or negative consequences are seen as barbaric or unnecessary; everything can be solved by therapy or education. The net effect is that moral distinctions blur: the virtuous and the vicious are just two “styles” with no ultimate difference in worth. Just as Origen dissolved the distinction between saint and sinner in eternity, relativism dissolves it in the here and now.

Now, compare this to Origen’s universalism: It denies that anyone will finally be evil (since all will convert) and denies that God will permanently judge (since all punishments are temporary and remedial). The parallel is striking:

• Relativism: “No one is truly evil; it’s all subjective perspective or social construct. Given their circumstances, everyone’s choices are understandable.”
  
• Origenism: “No one is damned forever; sin is essentially a mistake born of ignorance that God will eventually fix. All souls are just at different stages, but none is permanently lost.”
  

Both positions come from an instinct to excuse or minimize the gravity of sin. The relativist does it by flattening moral values in this life; the universalist does it by flattening outcomes in the next. In both cases, the underlying sentiment is: “It will be okay; don’t be so harsh as to say something or someone is definitively bad.” This sentiment masquerades as compassion. It sells itself as a deeper understanding of love. After all, isn’t it more loving to believe everyone has some good reason for what they do, or that everyone will eventually be saved?

Yet, as we shall argue, this is a misguided and hollow love. It’s a sentimentalism that fears the sight of tragedy so much that it denies tragedy’s possibility. It’s akin to a doctor who, seeing a gangrenous wound, says, “It’s not that bad; all wounds heal eventually,” because he cannot bear to tell the patient the truth or perform the amputation. True compassion, by contrast, recognizes the seriousness of the situation and engages it truthfully. Sometimes true love says, “This is going to hurt” or “You are in danger.” The relativist/universalist pseudo-love never says that; it only ever soothes: “You’re fine, I’m fine, we’re all fine.” This is why we call it pastoral nihilism – it’s pastoral in tone (soft, comforting), but nihilistic in content (erasing truth and meaning).

Let’s look at key parallels in consequences:

• Denial of real evil: Moral relativism effectively denies that any act can be called intrinsically evil or any person morally culpable. It all becomes a matter of opinion or context. Similarly, apokatastasis denies the ultimate reality of unrepented evil – since every evil will eventually be purified away, one might question whether evil has any enduring reality at all. Origen basically taught that evil has no substance and endures only until God educates the sinner enough. That can lead to a dangerously light view of evil: not as rebellion to be renounced under threat of damnation, but as a misstep to be corrected over time. In Origen’s framework, sin is more mistake than rebellion, more sickness than willful malice. Likewise, relativists often talk about wrongdoing in therapeutic terms (“they’re broken/hurt, that’s why they lash out”) rather than moral terms (“they chose to do wrong”). To be sure, both sickness and will are involved in sin – but to reduce sin to only sickness is to remove personal responsibility. Both modern thought and Origen’s thought frequently reduce evil to a kind of ignorance. (Origen explicitly did so in his interpretation of hell as remedial enlightenment .) Modern secular culture often says criminals just need better education or psychological treatment. Missing is the acknowledgment of outright wicked choices that merit condemnation. In Christian terms, the relativist’s stance echoes the serpent’s lie: “You shall not surely die” (Gen 3:4) – i.e., there won’t really be consequences. It’s telling that in some modern theology influenced by this ethos, Hell itself is reconceived not as retributive justice but as basically God’s love misunderstood – thus not really an active punishment. That’s a short step from saying hell isn’t real at all or will not last.
  
• Flattening of hierarchy and moral order: As discussed earlier, Origen flattened the hierarchy of being and holiness such that all differences became degree, not kind. Relativism similarly flattens the moral order. For example, instead of virtues and vices, modern culture prefers to speak of “lifestyles” or “preferences.” No one way to live is held superior; the saint is not hailed as objectively better than the libertine – they just have different “authentic selves.” This egalitarian ethos in morality matches Origen’s egalitarian eschatology: in the end, everyone (St. Paul, Hitler, the Blessed Virgin, Satan, you name it) is on the same level of “saved,” just having taken different routes to get there. One can see a trivializing effect in both: the heroic virtue of martyrs and the egregious cruelty of tyrants both even out in Origen’s eternity (since both eventually get the same prize). Likewise, in relativistic society, the sacrifice of the faithful and the indulgence of the selfish are often leveled – you’ll hear sentiments like, “Well, that’s your truth; someone else has their truth,” as if the life of charity and the life of depravity were just flavors. This dissolution of moral distinctions is extremely corrosive to meaning. If one thing is as good as another, then ultimately nothing is worth dying for, nothing is worth living for. Relativism births indifference, just as universalism (when really believed) would logically remove the urgency of conversion and evangelization (“All will be saved anyway, so why the fuss?”). Indeed, one observes that in circles where Balthasar’s “dare we hope all men be saved?” has been taken up with zeal, there is often a decline in missionary impetus and a soft-pedaling of calls to repentance. If hell is empty or likely to be, the stakes drop. Similarly, if no lifestyle is wrong, calling anyone to repent or change is seen as fanatical or judgmental. In both realms, mission is stunted by the loss of conviction that something real is at stake.
  
• Rejection of responsibility and consequence: Both universalism and relativism reject the notion that a creature might forever wreck itself by misuse of freedom. The relativist doesn’t even conceive of “wrecking” – only different experiences. The universalist admits temporary wreckage but promises a full rebuild eventually. In either case, the seriousness of our freedom is denied. It is one of Christianity’s boldest claims that God endowed us with a free will so significant that He allows us to decide our eternal identity. “Life and death I set before you… choose life” (Deut 30:19). Relativism sneers at this kind of language – life and death, good and evil, in its view are outdated binaries. Universalism might accept the binary in theory but then say, “Even if you choose death, don’t worry, it will turn into life later.” The modern aversion to anything that sounds “negative” or “condemnatory” leads many preachers and teachers to shy away from mentioning hell or Satan or sin. The idea of consequence offends contemporary sensibilities that prefer an endless safety net. (We see it even in parenting and education – many children are raised without hearing “no” or experiencing real consequences for poor behavior, on the theory that this is more loving. The result is often entitled, morally confused individuals.) Analogously, a theology that removes the possibility of hell tends to produce spiritually complacent, unrepentant individuals. As the proverb says, “Because sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the sons of men is fully set to do evil” (Eccl 8:11). If one preaches as though in the end God will reward everyone regardless, people’s incentive to strive for holiness or fear offending God diminishes. This is observable: where universalist ideas prevail, sacraments like Confession fall into disuse, ascetical discipline erodes, and often faith itself is seen as optional (since a loving God wouldn’t exclude nonbelievers, would He?). In secular relativism, similarly, if society communicates that nothing is really wrong, we should not be surprised when many act as if nothing is forbidden. “Do what thou wilt” becomes the whole of the law – ironically, a maxim from occultist Aleister Crowley (a Satanist, interestingly enough), but it captures the spirit of relativistic culture. Universalism is basically the eschatological version of “do what you want – it’ll turn out fine.”
  

The common root of Origen’s heresy and moral relativism is a kind of humanitarian sentiment divorced from truth. Both arise from an emotional recoil against something perceived as “hard”: in Origen’s case, eternal damnation seemed too cruel to reconcile with divine love; in modern man’s case, binding moral norms and judgments seem too “intolerant” to reconcile with human autonomy and niceness. Rather than probe deeper to reconcile love with truth, both tendencies simply ditch the truth part. Origen ditched the truth of God’s just judgment and the creature’s permanent choice; relativism ditches the truth of objective morality and the need to conform to God’s order. What remains is a soft vision of love: God as an all-indulgent grandfather, morality as an ever-flexible therapy.

2. Consequences: The Illusion of Freedom and Love Without Content

The tragic irony is that this false compassion yields the very opposite of what it promises. By denying the reality of moral evil and eternal loss, relativism and universalism end up hollowing out freedom, love, and justice – the very things they claim to uphold. Let us enumerate the consequences clearly (and here, we will present them as a series of key points, since they are crucial takeaways):

• If all are saved regardless of choice, then freedom is an illusion. A freedom that has no effect on outcomes is not genuine freedom. It’s like playing a game where no matter what moves you make, you cannot win or lose – the result is fixed. Such a “game” quickly becomes pointless. Similarly, if after perhaps a trillion years of stubborn resistance I am guaranteed to embrace God, then my initial freedom to reject Him wasn’t real; it was just a delay of the inevitable. In Origen’s cosmos, a soul can say “no” for a long time, but eventually it must say “yes” – thereby our “yes” loses meaning, since it was compelled by the structure of the age(s), not truly ours forever. God respects us too much to treat us that way. He “begs” us to choose life (2 Cor 5:20) but does not secretly rig the system to coerce a choice. Universalism, by asserting the final salvation of all, inadvertently infantilizes rational creatures: it’s like a parent who lets a child pretend to make decisions but in the end overrides everything to ensure a predetermined outcome. That is not the exalted view of human dignity that Christianity actually teaches. On the contrary, the Church teaches that God, in creating us free, takes the incredible “risk” of our eternal no. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “[God] created things which had free will… and apparently this is the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.” Remove that risk, and you remove the high-stakes drama of love. What you have then is a universe of marionettes: they thrash about, but all end with heads bowed to heaven, not by valor of their will but by the cut string of their defiance.
  
• If no one is damned, then love has no real content and justice no meaning. Why do we say this? Consider love: to love God truly is to cleave to Him above all else, to prefer Him even to oneself. Martyrs demonstrate love by sacrificing their lives rather than deny Christ. But if denying Christ ultimately carries no permanent loss, the martyr’s heroism is undermined. In a universe where Hitler ends up in heaven just like St. Maximilian Kolbe (whom Hitler’s regime killed), what does that say of Kolbe’s sacrifice? Could he not have just saved himself and waited for God to sort it out later? The content of love – which includes loyalty, self-giving, and yes, a willingness to face loss for the beloved – is emptied if betrayal and fidelity receive the same reward. Christ said, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). If all roads lead to heaven, then the one who lays down his life is no greater in the end than the one who takes others’ lives. That is a morally repugnant flattening. It makes a mockery of the call to holiness. Some proponents of universalism say, “Oh, maybe all will be saved, but through much pain – so virtue still ‘pays’ by avoiding that pain.” But this is just a utilitarian calculus of pain, not the glory of love freely chosen. If the only difference is temporary pain, then virtue reduces to enlightened self-interest (“be good so you don’t suffer long”). The eternal contrast of heaven and hell – ultimate union versus ultimate separation – that is what underscores the radical value of love versus selfishness. Remove the contrast, love becomes a sentiment with no weight, and evil becomes a mere folly, not a catastrophe. As for justice: in a moral universe, justice means the rendering to each his due. The scriptures and Fathers insist that God’s justice is real and holy – “God will render to each according to his works” (Rom 2:6). If all ends the same, strict justice is bypassed. The Last Judgment in Matthew 25 portrays a separation of sheep and goats based on their treatment of Christ in others, with “these (the goats) going into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” If in reality both groups end up with eternal life (after a spell for the goats), then Christ’s teaching was at best misleading. More profoundly, the moral order would have no backbone. Can we even call God just if ultimately He does not uphold a distinction between the righteous and the wicked? The universalist might say God’s justice was satisfied by temporary purgatorial sufferings. But can any finite suffering “make up” for, say, the massacre of millions? If after some eons of purgation a genocidal tyrant sits at the banquet of the saints, one might well feel that justice has not been served. (Here the universalist might counter, “But then the saints, being loving, will rejoice even to see that tyrant saved.” Perhaps so – the blessed in heaven do love as God loves, willing all to be saved in principle. Yet we cannot escape that the drama of this life becomes farce if even the most heinous crimes and most persistent unrepentance terminate in the same felicity as sanctity.) Traditional doctrine, far from making the saints “gloat” over the damned (a caricature sometimes raised), actually preserves meaning: the saints rejoice in God’s justice and mercy, even as they mourn the self-exclusion of the lost – their joy is not in the suffering of the lost, but in the vindication of truth and goodness  . In universalism, however, truth and goodness were never at risk; the whole narrative was a guaranteed happy ending, rendering all the battles somewhat theatrical.
  
• Sin becomes a mere metaphor or temporary problem; salvation becomes cosmic therapy. If one believes that all sin will be corrected in the long run, then what is sin ultimately? Not a “wage of death” (Rom 6:23), but a learning experience. Origen literally described sinners as being like prodigal sons who just need some discipline and teaching. Modern liberal theology often views salvation similarly: not deliverance from eternal peril, but essentially therapeutic – God healing our inner brokenness, helping us reach fulfillment. There is truth in that – God does heal – but if that’s all salvation is, it loses the dimension of rescue from judgment. Christ becomes a therapist-in-chief rather than a Savior who saves from something definitive (hell, wrath, non-being). In Origen’s thought, Christ’s saving work was primarily to educate and provide an example (he held a very strong moral influence theory); indeed, he even thought Christ might have to be crucified again in future ages for the demons’ sake – a bizarre notion which shows how salvation became a kind of pedagogical mechanism in his system. When we reduce sin to metaphor (say, “hell is the hell we make on earth by unkindness”), then salvation too reduces to improving earthly life or psychological wellness. Many modern churches that functionally deny hell end up preaching a “gospel” of social betterment and personal growth – a far cry from “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim 1:15). It’s telling that those Christian communities most enamored of universalist ideas (or at least allergic to hell) often then downplay the Cross (seen as too violent) and the need for repentance (seen as shaming). Everything trends toward a soft humanism dressed in religious language. This is exactly what we see in secular culture’s relativism: religion is reinterpreted as self-help, Jesus as a guru of inclusion who never judges. In short, without the specter of eternal loss, Christianity risks morphing into a feel-good program, its transcendence flattened. The language of sin, repentance, spiritual combat, and fear of God evaporates, replaced by buzzwords of tolerance, acceptance, self-esteem. But a Christianity without the Cross and the possibility of hell is not the Christianity of Christ or the saints. It’s a pale religion of “I’m OK, you’re OK.” The desert fathers used to say, “Keep your death (and judgment) daily before your eyes.” This was not to be morbid, but to stay real about what’s at stake. Remove that perspective, and spiritual fervor dies. Why fast, why vigil, why evangelize, if in the end all will be well no matter what? We end up with what might be called therapeutic religion, focused on worldly happiness and moral platitudes. Beneath its smile lies nihilism, for if our choices ultimately don’t matter, life has no weight of glory.
  
• Relativism as Pastoral Nihilism: The term “nihilism” is strong but apt. Nihilism means the belief that life has no objective meaning or value. A subtle nihilism creeps in when all outcomes are equal. Origen sought to avoid what he saw as the nihilism of eternal dualism – the meaningless suffering of the damned. Yet by eliminating that, he introduced another meaninglessness: a world where definitive stakes disappear. Likewise, modern culture’s refusal to condemn anything leads not to a joyful utopia but to a jaded, purposeless society. If nothing is truly wrong, then nothing is truly right either. People lose their moral compass and eventually their hope. We see this: despite all the talk of tolerance and “living your truth,” our secular world grows more anxious, depressed, and purposeless. Suicide rates climb, births decline (a sign of lost belief in life’s goodness), escapism via drugs and entertainment abounds. Why? Because a world without moral truth and ultimate justice is scary in its emptiness. We actually crave boundaries and meaning. G.K. Chesterton quipped, “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” So too, if we don’t believe in hell, we’ll believe any number of absurdities (from reincarnation to no-fault universal salvation to just extinction) to fill the gap – or we’ll distract ourselves from thinking about death at all. Universalism masquerades as hope – “we hope all will be saved!” – but it is actually a form of despair about truth. For it says, in effect, “We cannot face the tragic possibility that some might reject love; we cannot bear a cosmos where not everyone ends up happy; we cannot fathom a God who allows hell – so we deny that reality.” This is less a theological stance and more a psychological coping mechanism. It reminds one of people who, facing a terminal illness, refuse to acknowledge it and speak as if they will certainly recover. It’s understandable, but it’s living in unreality – and that doesn’t ultimately help. True pastoral care means telling people the truth in love: that their choices have eternal import, that God’s mercy is unfathomable but not to be presumed upon, and that “today is the day of salvation.” Relativistic compassion is an anesthesia that numbs the pain but lets the cancer grow. It is a nihilism wrapped in compassion’s clothing. By contrast, the medicine of truth might sting (fear of hell is not pleasant), but it can spur real healing (fleeing to God’s mercy and changing one’s life).
  

3. Relativism as False Compassion: Mercy against Truth

To sum up, the denial of hell and hierarchy often masquerades as compassion but ends up erasing meaning. We see this in both Origen’s ancient theological error and in today’s cultural ethos. The rallying cry is “mercy” – How could a loving God allow anyone to be lost? How can we be so “cruel” as to say someone’s lifestyle is sinful? – but this mercy is set against truth, rather than grounded in it. It becomes a sentimental mercy that would have God contradict Himself.

Hans Urs von Balthasar, though he stopped short of dogmatic universalism, issued a revealing warning. He said that some modern theologians so stress God’s mercy that they create an opposition: they pit God’s mercy against God’s truth, almost implying God’s mercy would override His own judgments at the end . Balthasar himself disliked that distortion, even as some accuse him of it. The Orthodox Church teaches that God’s mercy and justice are ultimately one in Him – they are simply God’s goodness seen from different angles. God is infinitely merciful, yes, but His mercy does not negate truth. Mercy without truth is not real mercy; it’s indulgence or sentimentality. Likewise, truth without mercy can become cold and crushing (as the Pharisees’ approach to law was). The full Christian message is mercy in truth: God offers forgiveness precisely because sin is real and awful; He offers salvation because peril is real.

Origen’s mistake, and that of today’s soft theology, is an impatience with the tension of mercy and truth. In Origen’s case, he resolved the tension by effectively dissolving truth (the truth of judgment) into mercy (universal restoration). But in doing so, his “mercy” ironically becomes merciless towards meaning: it would compel all into a final unity, even the devil, violating the integrity of their choices. Modern relativism too appears merciful (“we accept everyone, judge no one”), but actually it leaves people in their errors and sins without calling them to the fullness of truth that could save them. It’s like seeing a man about to drink poison and saying, “Who am I to judge his choice of beverage?” That is not love – it’s indifference. The opposite of love is not hatred; it is indifference. And universalist-relativist “love” all too often slides into a shiny indifference, because ultimately nothing is serious enough to elicit a passionate response.

Thus, paradoxically, Origen’s universalism – far from being too optimistic – is not optimistic enough about the creature and about God. It’s not optimistic enough about the creature, because it doesn’t believe God’s image in man can stand the drama of real freedom – it has to ensure we all turn out okay, as if we were not strong enough to handle a genuine choice. And it’s not optimistic enough about God’s sovereign wisdom, because it cannot accept that God could allow a rebellious creature eternally without somehow marring His victory. But God is so sovereign He can incorporate even the permanent “No” of demons and the damned into His overarching glory, as a dark backdrop that contrasts and highlights the splendor of grace and the willing “Yes” of the saved. In the end, every knee bowing (Phil 2:10) doesn’t necessarily mean every will loving – the unwilling knees (like the devils’) bow by compulsion under His power, and even that redounds to His honor.

In the next section, we will articulate the Orthodox Christian response to this challenge: how to properly understand freedom, hierarchy, judgment, and love in harmony. We will present the vision of a God whose love is maximally merciful yet never at the expense of truth or freedom. We will also reclaim the concept of kenosis (self-emptying) and show that the true universal harmony God seeks is not a flattening absorption (as Origen’s was) but an ordered symphony of many free wills. This will set the stage for affirming the true Christian hope: a hope not that skirts tragedy by fiat, but that overcomes it through the Cross, preserving forever both the meaningfulness of our choices and the inexhaustible mercy of God for those who open themselves to it.

VI. The Orthodox Response: Hierarchy, Freedom, and Kenosis

Having critiqued Origen’s error and its modern echoes, we now turn to the positive vision of Orthodoxy – the vision that upholds genuine freedom, authentic love, and the beauty of hierarchy in God’s plan, all held together by God’s self-giving mercy (kenosis). Where universalism flattens and relativism trivializes, the Orthodox faith proclaims a cosmos where each person’s choice has eternal significance and yet God’s love suffuses all in a way that does not coerce but invites. We will outline key points of this Orthodox response:

1. Freedom in Orthodoxy: Synergy, not Autonomy or Necessity.
   
2. Love and Judgment as Two Sides of God’s Presence.
   
3. Kenosis and Hierarchy: The Many Wills Transfigured in One Symphony.
   

Through these, we shall see that the true Christian hope is universal invitation, not universal imposition – that God wills all to be saved (1 Tim 2:4) and provides superabundant grace, but in a way that honors the mystery of creaturely freedom. This yields a final state of harmony that is not monotone (as Origen’s would be), but a symphonic union of distinct, freely consenting creatures in the love of the Triune God.

1. Freedom in Orthodoxy: Synergy of Divine and Human Wills

Orthodox theology holds a balanced doctrine of free will often termed synergy (cooperation) between God and man. Against any notion of grace compelling the will irresistibly (as some interpretations of Augustinian predestination might suggest) and equally against Pelagian self-sufficiency, Orthodoxy posits that God initiates, sustains, and completes every good work in us, yet we must freely cooperate at each step. “Without God, man cannot; without man, God will not.” This maxim, often attributed to St. Augustine, encapsulates the synergy principle. God’s grace is absolutely necessary and primary – it is He who “works in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). But we are not passive blocks; we are created with the capacity to respond. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,” Paul also says (Phil 2:12), immediately before the above quote – showing the two sides of the coin: our working and God’s working, in tandem.

In Orthodoxy, freedom is not mere autonomy (doing whatever one feels); it is the capacity to align with the Good, to willingly embrace God’s will. True freedom is “freedom for” excellence and communion, not simply “freedom from” constraint. Modern secular thinking idolizes the latter (license), but Christianity values the former (virtue). An excellent analogy is musical: a musician is “free” to play a magnificent piece only after discipline and alignment with musical laws. Similarly, the saints are the freest of people because they have freely bound themselves to God’s will, which is the true fulfillment of their nature.

God’s desire is the free synergy of His rational creatures in love. This is evident from Scripture’s constant calls to choose – “Choose this day whom you will serve” (Josh 24:15). Christ weeps over Jerusalem, “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood, and you would not!” (Matt 23:37). There is tragic tenderness in that lament: God willed their salvation, but they thwarted His will (not in ultimate global outcome, but in their personal history). This shows two things: God does not want any to perish (2 Pet 3:9), yet He permits human freedom to refuse His grace. The Council of Orange (529 AD) against Pelagianism taught: “God created us without us, but He will not save us without us.” In other words, our consent is necessary. (This consent itself is enabled by grace – no one can come to Christ unless the Father draws him, John 6:44 – but it is not forced; it is a true co-working.)

Now, how does this refute universalism? Because if salvation is synergy, then a human being (or angel) can, by mystery of free will, fail to cooperate. Grace can be resisted: “You always resist the Holy Spirit,” Stephen tells the Sanhedrin (Acts 7:51). In Orthodoxy, even after initial conversion, one can fall away by ceasing to cooperate (hence the many warnings to persevere). Therefore, the scenario of a definitive self-exclusion from God is accepted as a sad possibility. God in His sovereignty knows how to bring good even from that (just as a master composer can integrate dissonance to highlight harmony). But He will not override the creature’s freedom even to save it. Such overriding would not be healing; it would be annihilation of the person and replacement with another.

This point is crucial: God’s omnipotence is not God’s will-to-power, but God’s will-to-love. And love, by its nature, does not coerce. Could God force all to love Him? Perhaps in raw power, yes (He could rewire minds), but that would contradict His nature which is love. Love “does not seek its own way” (1 Cor 13:5); God seeks our love freely given, not an automaton’s worship. The Orthodox troparion (hymn) for Pentecost says of the Holy Spirit: “He distributes gifts to each one, as He wills.” The Spirit gently invites each soul, offering grace, but not all accept. As the venerable St. Isaac the Syrian taught, even those in hell are still loved by God – it’s just that they refuse that love and so experience it as scourge .

Thus, in Orthodoxy, freedom is taken with utmost seriousness. Far from lessening God’s glory, this seriousness glorifies God’s creative wisdom. He made real sons and daughters, not puppets. This is why the stakes are high. Far from a flaw in the system, the possibility of hell is the “cost” of giving us the dignity of causality in our destinies. This dignity is so exalted that the Mother of God, in Eastern tradition, is even called “co-redemptrix” in the sense that her free fiat (“Let it be to me according to your word,” Luke 1:38) was necessary for the Incarnation and thus the salvation of the world. God awaited the consent of a human mother to send His Son. He did not have to set it up that way, but He did – to synergistically involve His creature in the plan of salvation.

When we understand synergy, we see that universalism short-circuits synergy. It basically claims God’s side of the equation will ensure the human side eventually. But God’s will is not a bulldozer. Instead, He continually offers grace, even to the last breath (remember the thief on the cross saved in his final hour – Luke 23:42–43). However, if a person dies entrenched in rejection, God respects that eternally. The synergy has failed not by God’s lack, but by man’s. This is not a limitation on God, but a self-limitation God chooses out of respect for how He made us.

To put it another way: Salvation is a marriage between God and the soul. God, the heavenly Bridegroom, has betrothed humanity to Himself in Christ. But a marriage requires the bride’s willing “I do.” On the cross, Christ has already said “I do” to us, uniting Himself to us. In baptism, a soul says “I do” to Christ. But imagine a scenario in which someone utterly refuses to ever say “I do” – can the marriage be consummated? No, it would violate the integrity of the sacrament. God does not want unwilling consorts. Hell, then, is essentially the state of not marrying God, of refusing union. And God will not perform a spiritual “forced marriage.” He honors our refusal – heartbroken, as many scriptures attest, but He honors it.

This synergy perspective fosters responsibility and hope simultaneously. We are responsible – our choices really matter. But we are hopeful because God’s grace is abundant and ever at work to elicit our yes. Unlike Calvinism’s determinism or strict Augustinian predestination, which can verge on making us passive, synergy says God truly wants each person’s salvation and gives sufficient grace, yet that grace must be freely embraced. Unlike Pelagianism or pure Arminianism, synergy says God’s grace precedes and empowers every good act, so we can’t boast or think we save ourselves. It’s a mystery – 100% God’s gift, 100% our assent.

Thus, the Orthodox Church prays fervently for all, even for those who seem far from salvation, because we trust God’s grace can reach them if they consent. But the Church does not presume to declare that consent inevitable. We are to “work while it is day” (John 9:4) and “today, if you hear His voice, harden not your hearts” (Heb 3:15). There is urgency and moral weight, and thus a galvanizing force for mission and holiness.

2. Love and Judgment: The Fire of God’s Presence

Orthodoxy holds a profound understanding that God’s love and God’s judgment are not opposites, but the same reality experienced differently by different creatures. This was hinted at earlier when discussing hell as the experience of God’s love by those who hate Him. In patristic thought, especially Eastern, hell is not the absence of God, but His presence as wrath. That is, God is present to all (since nothing can exist away from the Sustainer), but to the righteous His presence is light and warmth, to the wicked the same presence is fire and burning. The issue lies in the orientation of the person, not an arbitrary decree.

St. Isaac the Syrian beautifully (and frighteningly) described this: “Those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love… Nay, what is so bitter and vehement as the torment of love? I mean that those who have become conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment from this than from any fear of punishment… It would be improper to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God… The power of love works in two ways: it torments sinners (even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend)… but it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties… Thus, I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret.” Isaac’s insight aligns with many Fathers: St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, and later theologians like St. Symeon the New Theologian and St. Gregory Palamas, all convey in various ways that the “fire” of the final judgment is nothing other than the fiery energy of God’s love/truth. “Our God is a consuming fire” (Heb 12:29). Consuming what? Consuming sin and impurity. To a soul clinging to sin, that fire consumes the soul’s false self, which is experienced as severe pain. To a soul purified (through repentance and grace), that fire consumes only the remaining dross and then shines as light and warmth.

There aren’t two fires – one of punishment, one of glory – but one divine fire, as even some Western mystics like St. Catherine of Genoa echoed. In iconography of the Eastern Church, the River of Fire in Daniel 7:10 and Revelation 22 is sometimes depicted flowing from Christ’s throne – and the saints are in it rejoicing, while the damned are in it suffering. The difference is interior to the creatures, not coming from a different “mood” in God. God’s love is steadfast and unchanging; “I am the Lord, I change not” (Mal 3:6). He “desires not the death of the sinner” (Ezek 33:11) and has no pleasure in the destruction of the wicked. However, when that love, which is pure holiness, meets a will that hates holiness, it results in what Scripture calls “wrath.” Not that God’s love changes into wrath, but the person experiences it as wrath because of their opposition.

This understanding avoids the caricature of a schizophrenic God (merciful here, cruel there). It also underscores responsibility: We determine how we experience the unchanging God, by our response. As Jesus said, “This is the judgment: that Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than Light” (John 3:19). The Light judges by its very shining – those who hate it flee and thereby judge themselves.

The Orthodox liturgy and prayers emphasize that hell is self-chosen. The anaphora of St. Basil’s Liturgy states that after the fall, God did not turn away but “visited him [man] in diverse ways… Thou hast sent forth the prophets… Thou hast acted through those who feared Thee… and in the fullness of time didst send Thine Only-Begotten Son… that He might condemn sin in His flesh, so that those who were dead in Adam might be made alive in Christ.” Despite all this, if a person still refuses salvation, it’s not from God’s failure to give grace, but from their rejection. At the Last Judgment icon, Christ’s face is often half gentle, half stern – symbolizing mercy and justice as one. The famed saying of Church Father St. John of Damascus captures it: “God’s judgment is not a matter of emotional anger; it is the state of creatures who have voluntarily separated themselves from love.” For the blessed, “the fire of God’s love becomes light; for the reprobate, the same fire becomes burning.” Hence, one can say God does not send anyone to hell; people send themselves by refusing to partake of the divine light.

Now, how does this counter universalism? It shows that salvation cannot be a one-sided divine move. If a will eternally sets itself against God, God’s very love becomes its hell – unless that will softens (repents). We have reason to hope all human wills may soften at death’s brink or before – the Church prays for everyone’s repentance. But we have no certainty; and the existence of demons’ intransigent will indicates that at least some minds can fix in evil. So if a creature arrives at the judgment hating God’s love, that love itself is their torment. Could God withdraw His presence to relieve them? That would be non-existence (since all being is through His presence). Out of love, He sustains them in being, even if they experience it wretchedly. Origen would say eventually they’ll change and love the light. But he might under-appreciate the mysterious depth of free will – that it can become irrevocably obstinate. The Eastern fathers speculated that the demons’ case shows how a will can so solidify that even infinite love only causes infinite gnashing of teeth. There is a frightening line in Revelation: after great plagues meant to spur repentance, “They cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores and did not repent of their deeds” (Rev 16:11). Even in dire chastisement, the obstinate double down. This hints that some may carry that hardness to the grave and beyond.

The Orthodox Church certainly hopes in God’s mercy to the last possible extent (we have prayers for a good death, and trust God saves many in ways known to Him). But she also affirms the reality of hell from Christ’s own words and from her spiritual experience (e.g., many saints had visions of both paradise and hades, confirming that not all are saved). She sees hell not as a blot on God’s love, but as the ineluctable shadow cast by His love when encountering hatred. Origen’s universalism inadvertently belittled love by saying it would “erase” any hatred with time. Orthodoxy replies: love does not compel, it illuminates. If someone hates illumination, God doesn’t extinguish His light; He leaves it shining – and that person sadly suffers in the light rather than rejoicing in it. In that sense, hell is love’s shadow, not love’s negation.

Thus, the Orthodox theological vision of hell preserves both God’s love and human freedom. It’s a key part of why Orthodoxy rejects the universalist outcome: not because God’s love fails, but because creatures can eternally fail to love. The same fire of divine love that purifies the saint torments the obstinate sinner. This “two-edged” nature of God’s presence underscores the urgency of repentance without succumbing to the error of imagining God as vindictive. He is “the Lover of mankind” always – but we decide whether that love will be heaven or hell to us.

3. Kenosis and Hierarchy: The Many Wills Transfigured in One Symphony

We earlier discussed how Origen’s universalism aimed at a oneness that actually destroyed meaningful hierarchy. The Orthodox vision of ultimate unity is very different. It is not the flattening of all beings into an undifferentiated mass, but the harmonization of distinct persons in one divine life. A favorite image of the Fathers (especially St. Irenaeus and St. Gregory of Nyssa) is that of a choir or a symphony: many voices, each unique, singing one song in concord. Or as St. Ignatius of Antioch said, the Church is like strings of a lyre, different tones producing one melody through love.

In Orthodoxy, the concept of kenosis (self-emptying) applies both to God and to us, and it’s key to how hierarchy is transfigured into harmony:

• God’s Kenosis: The ultimate act of condescension is the Incarnation. The Word “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant… and becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:7–8). This kenosis of the Son reveals that God does not save by domineering, but by humility and suffering love. Jesus said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself” (John 12:32). Notice: draw, not drag. The Cross is the magnet of love, not an engine of coercion. By pouring Himself out unto death and rising, Christ opened the path for all, demonstrating utter self-giving. This act honored our freedom: He invites, does not force. As the exaltation in Philippians goes on: “Therefore God has highly exalted Him…” so that every knee should bow and every tongue confess Jesus is Lord (Phil 2:9–11). The universality of Christ’s Lordship is established through His kenosis. This shapes the Church’s approach: “We preach Christ crucified” (1 Cor 1:23) as the means to reach hearts. The Lamb that was slain is enthroned (Rev 5:6). So in the end, those who freely bow and confess will do so moved by His sacrificial love, not by fear of power. Those who refuse to confess even then (the demons, et al.) convict themselves.
  
• Our Kenosis: We, in imitating Christ, also practice kenosis. We empty ourselves of ego, pride, and self-will, in order to be filled with God. This is synergy in action: God gives grace, we yield ourselves. The Theotokos (Virgin Mary) is the prime human example: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” – her humility and surrender made her womb spacious enough to contain the uncontainable God. Likewise each saint in their way says, “Not my will, but Thine be done.” This is not annihilation of will, but sanctification of it – as Christ said, “He who loses his life for My sake will find it” (Matt 16:25). By kenosis, we do not become non-entities; rather we become our true selves in God (like a seed must die to become a plant). All the saints retain their distinct personalities – Peter is not Paul is not Mary Magdalene – yet each has emptied sinful self-love and is filled with divine love. They constitute a hierarchy of holiness (some shine more, some less, as St. Isaac said) but without envy or pride. Hierarchy, in the end, is simply order – God is a God of order (1 Cor 14:33). Even in the redeemed state, the angels have choirs and ranks, the saints have degrees of glory (as star differs from star). But, crucially, no one resents another’s higher glory, because all love perfectly. The teaching is that each saved person will rejoice at others’ rewards (just as we on earth should rejoice with those who rejoice, Rom 12:15) and no one will covet a higher place. “Everyone will have as much glory as he can contain,” said St. Gregory the Theologian, “and since some contain more, some less, each will rejoice in the other’s capacity, being of one mind and one love.” The last sentence exemplifies the symphony: differing capacities of glory, but united will and love, so that hierarchy becomes part of the beauty. It’s like how in music some voices hold melody, others harmony, some loud, some soft, yet together they make one beautiful sound. No part is superfluous or begrudged.
  

This Orthodox eschatology opposes both extremes: the egalitarian flatness of Origen’s apokatastasis (where even identities risk being lost and all distinctions erased) and any cruel notion of heaven gloating over hell (instead, heaven is filled with love such that what is just is accepted without malice). Instead, we get a fully theandrically orchestrated creation – “theandrically” meaning divine-human synergy through and through. In the end, the Kingdom is described as a wedding banquet (Matt 22:2) – a communal joyous feast – or as a city (Rev 21) – many dwelling together in light. These images speak to unity-in-diversity: many guests at one table, many citizens in one city.

Orthodoxy often uses the term deification (theosis): not that we become God by nature, but by grace we partake of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). Importantly, theosis is personal and varying: each is deified according to measure. Maximus the Confessor taught that just as in a circle all radii meet at the center, so in deification all persons converge into God, yet each retains their uniqueness as distinct points on the circumference. There is one center (God) drawing all, but many points that remain themselves. This is as far from a bland homogeneity as can be. Origen’s final unity, with all hypostases and names abolished, is almost like a drop losing itself in the ocean (closer to Eastern monism or some heretical strains). Orthodox unity is like a body composed of many members, or a choir of many voices – one organism, one song, but with rich internal differentiation.

This is the hierarchy of love the Church upholds: not a static hierarchy of oppression, but a dynamic hierarchy of freely bestowed glory. Every creature finds their ordained place, their unique mode of reflecting God, and together they form the ordered fullness of God’s family. Love perfects hierarchy. The highest serve the lowest (as Christ washed His disciples’ feet). The lower rejoice in the gifts of the higher. Thus all rivalry ceases and hierarchy becomes, not a power structure, but a structure of mutual love and kenotic (self-emptying) service.

In such a vision, God truly becomes “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28) in the redeemed: His love fills each and every one according to their capacity, and each person’s capacity is unique. Sin alone (the refusal of love) mars this order – and sin is quarantined in hell, unable to disturb the harmony of the New Creation. The stubborn refusal is outside the gates, by its own choice, while inside is all beauty of order and ordered freedom. This, Orthodoxy says, is far more glorious than Origen’s flattened cosmos. In Origen’s view, God’s triumph would have been a mass coalescence into sameness (even identity of all with God, in the most extreme reading). In the Orthodox view, God’s triumph is a multi-faceted, many-colored radiance of saints and angels, each freely united with Him in truth. It’s the difference between a single note held forever, and a mighty symphony.

Thus, hierarchy and freedom and love coexist in Orthodoxy’s final state. Indeed, they enhance each other. Freedom allows love to be real; love brings freedom to its fulfillment; hierarchy provides the beautiful structure for love to be shared without confusion. This is, ultimately, the vision of heaven that inspires the Church’s life: not an apokatastatic monolith, but a Kingdom of boundless light where every tear is wiped away (for the saved) and every heart’s longing is satisfied, yet every person remains a true person.

In summary, the Orthodox response to Origen’s error is the proclamation of a Gospel that is truly Good News precisely because it is truthful news. It doesn’t condescend to us by abolishing our freedom “for our own good”; it elevates us by calling us to freely enter into divine life. It doesn’t falsely promise a happy ending irrespective of our will; it honestly warns of the consequences of rejecting Love, thereby preserving the significance of our moral journey. And it doesn’t smear out all distinctions; it transfigures them in love, so that unity and diversity coexist in perfect peace. This is the symphony of salvation as opposed to Origen’s monotony of salvation. It is a vision where God’s mercy is maximized (truly offered to all) and God’s justice is vindicated (truly respected in those who refuse).

Having set forth the Orthodox vision on these points, we are prepared to address the ultimate implications of universal salvation – its nihilistic tendencies – and to see how our modern context has, in many ways, replayed Origen’s drama. Then we will conclude by reaffirming why only within the hierarchy of love and respect for final freedom do we uphold the full glory of the Gospel.

VII. The Nihilism of Universal Salvation

We have already touched on many aspects of why a guaranteed universal salvation would ironically collapse meaning. In this section, we gather those threads and present a final, forceful confrontation: that the doctrine of apokatastasis, for all its compassionate pretense, ends in a form of nihilism – a belief in nothing of ultimate significance. It undermines the drama of redemption, the moral weight of life, and even the character of God. We reiterate these points in summary to drive home the thesis.

1. The Problem of Meaning: If Good and Evil End the Same, Neither Has Meaning

Imagine a novel where heroes and villains struggle, sacrifice, and suffer, but no matter what, every character gets an identical happily ever after on the last page. Would that story carry weight? Or a sports match where both teams are declared champions at the end regardless of score – what was the point of playing? In much the same way, if the final outcome for the saint and the unrepentant sinner is identical bliss (after some patch-up purgatory perhaps), then the moral narrative of the universe collapses.

The entire biblical witness is structured around a moral narrative: creation, fall, redemption, judgment. The notion of judgment – that history is heading toward a reckoning where choices are revealed and destinies assigned – gives history urgency and coherence. “God has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness” (Acts 17:31). If after that day all differences are eventually nullified, the judgment becomes a kind of farce or temporary theater. It would be as if God says, “You, go to heaven; you, go to hell… but don’t worry, in a while I’ll bring you all back together anyway.” Such a scenario is nowhere intimated in Scripture – rather, the separation at judgment is always portrayed as final (“These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” There is no hint of a secret epilogue where the two groups merge).

What is evil, under a universalist lens? A bump in the road, a mistake to be corrected. Not a radical possibility to be rejected at great cost. What is good? Apparently something whose opposite yields the same final reward – thus, not truly good in a meaningful sense, just one path among others. For example, why extol martyrs if their very persecutors will inherit the same heaven eventually? Why extol virginity or fidelity if fornicators and adulterers eventually get the same crown? One might say, “Because virtue spares you interim punishments and regret.” Ah, so the difference is akin to taking a longer route or a shorter route to the same destination. That reduces moral gravity massively. Life’s moral stakes become like taking either a scenic but bumpy road or a straight smooth road – both lead to the same city. That is not how Scripture speaks of the two ways: it speaks of “the way of life and the way of death.” One leads to an entirely different end than the other (Deut 30:19, Jer 21:8).

If we say, instead, “No, there is only one way (Christ), and all will eventually be brought to walk in it,” then what do we make of human freedom? It would imply that either in life or after, every knee will bow freely. But for many, death seals their will in enmity (as argued above). So then, how do they come to bow? If freely, then one wonders why they didn’t earlier – what new factor appears? (Here some propose post-mortem evangelization with a clearer vision of truth; but the Fathers largely consider this life definitive for choice, barring unique circumstances.) If not freely, then God forces – which as we’ve shown undermines love and justice.

Therefore, under universalism, the drama of redemption turns into a tragi-comedy: tragedies occur, but at the final curtain call, the villains join hands with the heroes and bow to applause – “it was all in good fun folks, everyone’s fine.” This sense of farce is not an exaggeration: some universalists explicitly liken life’s evils to “God’s severe mercy” or pedagogies that in the end are as if a bad dream. But try telling that to a Holocaust survivor or to a parent who lost a child to murder – that ultimately this evil will merely serve as a teachable moment for the perpetrators who will also sit at the banquet of God. The moral intuition rebels. If Hitler and his victims share the same eternity, then at least on some level, moral chaos has been vindicated, not truly overcome. The monstrous injustice of the Holocaust is not rectified by all being saved – it’s rather papered over. Some universalists argue Hitler will undergo aeons of purgatorial purification, and then be saved, so justice is served. Yet, after those finite aeons, if he attains infinite bliss equal to his victims, does that suffice? And even those aeons – what purpose do they serve if not in the end to guarantee his conversion? It becomes mechanical.

No wonder historic Christian thought has insisted on an eternal hell: not out of vindictiveness, but out of recognition that without a possibility of irrevocable loss, moral and existential meaning evaporates. As Dostoevsky’s character Ivan famously contends, if there is no immortality (and thus no ultimate justice), “everything is permitted.” The same logic holds if immortality is guaranteed bliss for all: then likewise, everything is permitted (in the long run). Or at least, nothing ultimately matters.

When universalists respond that things do matter within time for relative progress and for avoiding suffering, that may suffice for a utilitarian ethic, but not for a transcendent ethic. The martyrs did not go singing to their deaths merely to “avoid some Purgatory later”; they did it because of love for Christ and belief that “better is one day in Thy courts than thousands elsewhere.” They believed some choices have eternal value. Take that away, and their witness loses its luster. The Church venerates saints precisely because they made the choice for God above all, whereas others did not. If those others end up same-saints later, the distinction blurs and thus the impetus to holiness now is weakened.

Thus, we say: If good and evil end the same, neither has meaning. It would make as little difference to God whether one was Mother Teresa or Stalin – both, after enough divine therapy, become saints. This offends not only our moral reason but the sense of God’s own holiness. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,” says Isaiah (5:20). A theology that effectively homogenizes them under final “good” falls under that woe ironically.

2. The Suffering of Love: Risking Eternal Consequence Gives Love its Sublimity

True love, as known in Christianity, involves risk and sacrifice. God’s love risked creating free beings who could reject Him; Christ’s love sacrificed Himself even at the risk that some would still spurn His gift. Our love for God, in return, involves the willingness to endure persecution, ridicule, even death rather than be separated from Him. “Love is strong as death” (Song 8:6). But if death cannot truly separate (since beyond death all come to God automatically), the heroism of love in time is undercut.

The suffering entailed in fidelity and repentance is meaningful precisely because it might not have been undertaken. A sinner’s deep repentance – say, an addict struggling to amend his life – carries the urgency that if he does not, he could be lost. If he knew beyond doubt, “Eventually I’ll be saved anyway,” how much easier to procrastinate! Likewise, the pain of a martyr enduring torture rather than apostatizing has meaning because something infinitely valuable is at stake (eternal communion with Christ). If all got that communion regardless, martyrdom reduces to maybe getting there a bit faster or with a higher crown (some universalists try to keep the idea of “greater reward” for saints to incentivize virtue, but if everyone is infinitely happy, that becomes moot – heaven is not a competitive sport; one doesn’t covet others’ rewards if one is full of joy).

The “tragic seriousness” (to borrow a phrase from modern philosopher Gabriel Marcel) of life is what spurs the heights of human virtue and devotion. Remove the stakes, you dampen the flame. Many saints have said, if there were no hell to fear and no heaven to gain, they’d still love God – true, but it remains that God chose to motivate us by setting before us heaven and hell, carrot and stick (Jesus does both: promises paradise, warns of Gehenna). Why? Because He made us and knows we need both encouragement of joy and warning of peril to move our hard hearts. Universalism guts the warnings, turning them into mere hypotheticals. Balthasar attempted to keep warnings as still pastorally useful even if in the end all are saved, but psychologically that’s a hard sell – many intuit “if in the final analysis God’s love ensures all saved, these warnings aren’t literal, I needn’t worry overly.” Balthasar insisted we can’t know all will be saved, thus we must act as though maybe not. But he entertained the hope strongly enough that many readers assume maybe indeed none are lost. The effect is lukewarmness often.

Consider also penitential suffering. The Church praises those who do penance for sins – fasting, prayer, almsgiving, sometimes severe asceticism (like the Desert Fathers in sackcloth and ashes crying for mercy). Why all this if at worst, sin just gets corrected in purgatory en route to assured bliss? The great tears of St. Peter after denying Christ – were they not spurred by his keen realization he might have cut himself off from his Lord? He wept bitterly (Luke 22:62). If universalism is true, one might imagine a flippant Peter thinking, “Well, I blew it, but He’ll fix me later anyway.” Unthinkable for someone who truly loved Christ – he wept precisely because he loved and because he feared the loss of that love’s fellowship. Jesus confirmed his reinstatement personally (“Do you love Me? Feed my sheep” – John 21:15–17), but Peter’s pain was real and salutary. It is the very risk of eternal consequence that makes love and repentance poignant and purgative.

Sentimentality – love without teeth – is not the love of the Cross. The Cross shows love’s cost and love’s demand. A sentimental universalism pictures love as a big hug that just dispels all sin without asking anything of the sinner. True love (God’s love) respects our freedom to the point of pain. When one loves another who is destroying themselves (e.g., a drug addict child), one feels immense pain at the possibility they might die estranged. That pain is proportionate to love’s intensity. If a parent had magical guarantee “no matter what my child does, eventually they’ll be fine,” it would oddly lessen the urgent zeal of their love. God’s love is often likened in Scripture to a parent or a bridegroom anxiously yearning over a wayward beloved (Hosea’s prophecy, Jesus over Jerusalem). That yearning has pathos because of real danger.

Remove the risk, you remove the drama. The end of universalism is indeed comedic (in the literary sense: all’s well that ends well), but it cheapens the agonizing glory of the “divine comedy” Dante wrote of, where not everyone ends well. In Dante, those in hell chose it and suffer accordingly, which makes the journey through inferno, purgatory, and paradise a solemn and sublime exploration of justice and mercy. If Dante had ended with everyone in paradise, his work would have little weight; he knew better from Christian intuition.

So, the suffering of love – be it God’s longsuffering for sinners or the saints’ suffering for God – gets its meaning from the possibility of final loss. “Great love can change small things into great ones,” said St. Faustina, “and it is only love which lends value to our actions.” If everything small or great gets the same final value, love’s differential meaning is lost.

3. God’s Justice and Mercy as One Act: Respecting Freedom to Preserve Meaning

Ultimately, the insistence on eternal hell for some is not a celebration of damnation; it’s a commitment to truth and freedom, which in turn upholds the value of love. God’s mercy is offered to all – this we hold firmly. Christ’s blood was shed for many for the forgiveness of sins (Matt 26:28) – “for many” meaning all who would receive, without limit on sufficiency. But God’s mercy does not negate His justice; in fact, they meet at the Cross. In the Cross, God judged sin (in Christ’s flesh, Romans 8:3) and showed mercy (forgiving executioners, opening paradise to the thief). Those who embrace the Cross through repentance and faith experience that reconciliation – justice satisfied and mercy bestowed become their salvation. Those who refuse the Cross’s offer remain with the weight of justice on themselves (John 3:36 – “Whoever disobeys the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him”).

Now, if God were at the end to simply wipe away the consequences for those who died in hardened disobedience, He would be, in effect, violating truth – the truth of their choice and the truth of His own words. “Let God be true, though every man be a liar” (Rom 3:4). God’s truth includes His promises of mercy and His warnings of judgment. If He doesn’t follow through on the latter at all, one might accuse Him (irreverently) of empty threats or error. Of course, universalists might say God does follow through but only temporarily. Yet, Scripture’s language of aionios (eternal) punishment set parallel to eternal life strongly indicates the same duration . The Church historically read it thus. So to reverse that would make God’s Word unreliable or deceptive.

God’s justice is not cruelty; it’s holiness in action, giving creatures what they choose (if not His grace, then separation). Some complain eternal hell is disproportionate to finite sin – but it’s not about a human “earning” X punishment, it’s about the state of enmity which, if chosen at death, simply continues. Hell’s eternity is the sinner’s own continuing rejection projected forever, not an externally imposed time sentence. As C.S. Lewis said, “The doors of hell are locked on the inside.” Or, in Revelation’s imagery, “Let the evildoer still do evil… and the righteous still do right” (Rev 22:11) – a depiction of God essentially saying, “Thy will be done” to each at the end.

Mercy against truth would mean saving someone against their will or without their conversion. That would degrade them and make a mockery of God’s respect for truth. Instead, mercy with truth means God always stands ready to pardon the contrite (that is absolute), but He does not pretend the impenitent are contrite nor treat the unholy as holy. “He who is filthy, let him be filthy still” (Rev 22:11) – that strange line suggests God’s final ratification of one’s freely settled character.

Thus, to preserve the meaningfulness of moral order and the authenticity of love, God must “leave hell in place” so to speak – not as a blemish but as a somber monument to freedom abused. The Gospel is a serious invitation, not a trivial guarantee. If all must be saved, God’s appeals and warnings become somewhat theatrical. But if some might be lost, they ring with dire earnestness – which they indeed do in Scripture.

Therefore, we conclude: far from being more loving or hopeful, the doctrine of universal salvation is in the final analysis nihilistic, flattening the moral universe and cheapening the love of God and man. The orthodox Christian stance, holding both the real possibility of damnation and God’s universal salvific will, navigates hope and fear in a fruitful tension. We hope fervently that each person will respond and be saved – we may even dare hope (with trembling) that God finds ways to reach each soul’s free consent (the Church prays for “the whole world” and trusts God’s mercy vastly exceeds ours). But we stop short of asserting that as fact or even as likely, precisely to honor what has been revealed about the stakes of sin. This hope is not a fluffy “everyone ends well,” but a hope-in-God that motivates mission, intercession, penance for oneself and others. It’s a hope that drives us to cooperate in God’s saving work for each soul. As another has said, “We must hope like universalists and live like particularists” – meaning we earnestly desire all saved, but we labor and pray for them as if otherwise they might not be.

In the final portion next, we will briefly survey how Origen’s idea has re-emerged in modern theology and culture (the “modern rebirth of Origenism”), reinforcing why our robust orthodox stance is needed now more than ever. Then we shall conclude by restating that only within the hierarchy of love and respect for final freedom do we uphold the true glory of the Gospel.

VIII. The Modern Rebirth of Origenism

Heresies often reappear in new guises, and Origen’s ancient error of apokatastasis is no exception. In our era, forms of “soft universalism” have crept into both theology and popular culture. While few mainstream Christian leaders openly declare “all will certainly be saved” (that remains formally unorthodox in Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and even most Protestant confessions), there are influential voices who strongly imply it or leave the door wide open. Additionally, secular culture harbors a functional universalism in its pluralistic ethos: the idea that “everyone’s truth is equally valid, and we’ll all be fine in the end.” In this section, we identify these modern heirs of Origen’s instinct and critique their approach, showing how they similarly diminish the seriousness of freedom, truth, and moral order.

1. In Modern Theology: Rahner, Balthasar, and Pluralist Soteriology

Two towering Catholic theologians of the 20th century are often associated – rightly or wrongly – with a drift toward universalist thinking: Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar. They are not simple Origenists; their thought is nuanced. But their influence has inclined many to effectively adopt a hopeful universalism.

• Karl Rahner’s “Anonymous Christian”: Rahner tackled the salvation of non-Christians by proposing that those who sincerely follow their conscience and respond to grace, even if they don’t explicitly know Christ, may be considered “anonymous Christians” – effectively participants in Christ’s saving grace without explicit faith. The intent was to affirm God’s universal salvific will and avoid a hard exclusivism (the idea that explicit Church membership is the only way to be saved). This is not universalism per se; it doesn’t guarantee all non-Christians are saved, but it gives a generous inclusion. However, critics note it so broadens the path that it risks indifferentism. If basically everyone of goodwill is “already a Christian” without knowing it, the urgency of mission and conversion wanes. Indeed, post-Vatican II, some interpreted Rahner’s idea as implying that explicit conversion to Christ is nice but not necessary – a step toward an attitude that practically assumes most people are saved. The Church still holds that salvation is only in Christ, but by mechanisms known to God, He may apply Christ’s merits to souls outside the visible Church. That’s acceptable dogma (and we see it in our prayers for “all mankind”). The problem is when this becomes a presumption that almost everyone responds implicitly to grace. Rahner’s approach, when simplified, can yield a complacency akin to universalism: if atheists, Buddhists, etc., can be saved by following the light of their conscience (and we assume most do), then apokatastasis is not far off in practical terms. (Notably, Rahner himself did not claim all are saved – but his emphasis led many to de facto universalist attitudes.)
  
• Hans Urs von Balthasar’s “Dare We Hope”: Balthasar, a deeply orthodox theologian in many respects, wrote a controversial book “Dare We Hope ‘That All Men Be Saved’?” He stops short of declaring all will be saved, but he strongly argues that Christians have a duty to hope for the salvation of each person  . He emphasizes that we cannot know any particular soul is in hell (the Church has never dogmatically declared any specific person damned, not even Judas; though scripture says things that strongly imply it in Judas’s case, Balthasar points out we still leave judgment to God). Balthasar critiques what he calls “Infernalists” – those he feels are too certain many are damned. In effect, he shifts the default attitude from fearing many are lost to hoping all might be saved. This sounds generous and indeed appeals to many modern Christians uneasy with the idea of hell. However, Balthasar has been critiqued on multiple grounds. Firstly, some say his “hope” easily slides into conviction in popular reception – people read it and assume, “Oh, we can reasonably expect all will be saved.” Balthasar insisted it’s just a hope, not knowledge. But hope in the biblical sense often carries moral certainty. Secondly, Balthasar’s stance potentially empties a lot of scripture’s warnings of their face value meaning – one might call his view “a practical universalism with an asterisk.” Indeed, certain followers of Balthasar have basically become universalists (like some in contemporary Catholic theology who propose we have good reason to think hell might be empty). Balthasar allowed the possibility of hell in principle but thought we may trust in God’s love so much that perhaps none will finally resist. In doing so, he (like Origen) highlighted God’s mercy but arguably downplayed human freedom’s mysterious obstinacy. And ironically, as some point out, Balthasar’s position goes against many saints and approved private revelations that do indicate souls in hell.
  
• Modern Pluralist Soteriology: Beyond specific theologians, a general mood in liberal Protestantism and progressive Catholic circles leans toward a universalist or pluralist outlook: the idea that all religions are paths to the same God, each culture has its own covenant, and God will not condemn those outside one’s own tradition. This was partly influenced by Rahner, partly by Enlightenment humanism. John Hick, a liberal Protestant philosopher, explicitly championed a pluralist theology where all great religions are valid and the concept of eternal hell is rejected as incompatible with a loving God. For Hick, the afterlife is perhaps an opportunity for continued soul-making until all reach the Real (his term for Ultimate Reality). This is basically a rehashed Origenism: cyclical or continued growth post-mortem culminating in universal reconciliation. Many mainline Protestant denominations now seldom mention hell. Hell and judgment have become taboo or reinterpreted as temporal or metaphorical. The Evangelical pastor Rob Bell made waves with his book “Love Wins”, which questioned the reality of eternal hell and implied everyone might eventually be saved (though he left some ambiguity). These trends show Origen’s logic creeping back: “God is love, so He wouldn’t damn anyone eternally.” The result is congregations that treat heaven as automatic and Christian life as more about social good now than salvation from hell. The “massa damnata” (mass of the damned) doctrine of Augustine is thoroughly out of fashion; now it’s almost “massa salvata” (mass of the saved). Some theologians speak of “hell” as at most a possibility for the most obstinate, but in practice assume it’s likely empty. There is often an implicit agreement with the culture’s view that nearly everyone goes to a better place when they die.
  

We see here the pastoral nihilism we described earlier. Out of a desire to emphasize God’s love and avoid offense, many Christian leaders have edged toward an Origen-like hope. The intentions are often kind. But the effect is a Christianity gutted of urgency, discipline, and awe. Notably, in these circles, one finds a sharp decline in sacramental confession, ascetic practice, preaching on sin and judgment, etc. If everyone’s basically okay, religion becomes therapeutic. We noted how Balthasar’s approach, though nuanced, can engender lukewarmness. The pluralist approach does so even more blatantly: if all paths are valid, why evangelize? If all end up saved, why strive heroically? The tragic sense of life is lost.

In short, Origenism is alive today. Sometimes it’s explicit (universalist theologians proposing apokatastasis anew, like Sergius Bulgakov in the 20th century Eastern Orthodox context, or Jürgen Moltmann in the Protestant context). Other times it’s implicit (the widespread aversion to hell in preaching, the notion that God wouldn’t allow anyone to be lost eternally, the presumption of universal mercy without conversion).

It’s worth mentioning that the Church has responded strongly whenever this idea resurfaces. In 1990, the Vatican’s doctrinal letter “On Certain Aspects of the Church’s Missionary Mandate” warned against the notion that the Great Commission is optional or that all religions suffice – reaffirming that Christ is the unique Savior and that rejecting the need for conversion endangers souls. In Eastern Orthodoxy, voices like St. Ignatius Brianchaninov or St. Theophan the Recluse in the 19th century reiterated the reality of eternal punishment in response to soft trends.

Yet the climate of our time is heavily averse to the idea of hell. Many assume if there is a hell, it’s probably empty (some cite Balthasar or misunderstood hints from Pope John Paul II, etc.). We must clarify: the Church does not teach that hell is empty – in fact, our Tradition via scripture and saints strongly indicates that some (tragically) do end in hell (e.g., Christ’s words about Judas, the unquenchable fire prepared for the devil and his angels, etc.). What the Church teaches is that God desires all saved and we should not despair of the salvation of any particular soul. But that is a far cry from presuming universal salvation.

Why press this point today? Because, as we have shown, losing the doctrine of hell (and by extension, the weight of moral distinction) leads to pastoral nihilism. Our culture’s moral chaos is linked to its loss of the fear of God. Similarly, the crisis in parts of Christianity (empty pews, loss of zeal) can be tied to an overcorrection toward “easy grace”. Origen’s modern heirs sometimes wear clerical collars, sometimes not – but in all cases they are characterized by a half-truth: emphasizing God’s goodness to the exclusion of His severity.

Hans Urs von Balthasar himself – sometimes considered an heir of Origen in hope – cautioned that a mentality of “universalism” in practice could undercut evangelization and holiness. He tried to maintain a balance (hope strongly, but never assert). Many of his followers, however, did not maintain that fine line. Bishop Barron in our day echoes Balthasar in proposing we may reasonably hope hell is empty – and indeed you see among some of his followers the attitude that it’s almost certainly so. This idea is appealing but can lull souls into complacency. (Barron does warn of hell’s possibility, but the emphasis on “reasonable hope” often lands as near-certainty in hearers.)

In summary, the modern rebirth of Origenism takes several forms:

• Theologically: theories of universal or near-universal salvation (Rahner’s inclusivism, Balthasar’s hopeful universalism, Moltmann’s universal reconciliation, etc.). Each stops short of crude Origenism, but each in effect dilutes the urgency of “work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12).
  
• Culturally: a pluralistic ethos that says it’s arrogant to think anyone goes to hell, that morality is relative, that a loving God accepts everyone as they are without demand for change. This is Origen’s instinct in secular form.
  
• Within Church life: a de-emphasis on sin, judgment, penance; an emphasis on God’s love in a way that often implies universal salvation (e.g., funerals that canonize every deceased regardless of their life; catechesis that omits hell entirely).
  

The result is what we have been calling “nihilist compassion.” Mercy is preached at the expense of truth. People are soothed but not saved (because they may never feel the need to truly repent or cling to Christ).

We diagnose this as the modern West’s “hope for all” that becomes, paradoxically, the last form of rebellion – mercy against truth. Our generation wants so much for everyone to be okay that it effectively tells God how to run His world (e.g., “A loving God must save all, otherwise He’s not loving”). This mentality might seem pious, but it can actually be a subtler pride: assuming our concept of “nice” is higher than God’s holy love which includes justice.

To combat this, we don’t preach hellfire to delight in fear; we preach the fullness of truth to truly love. We want people to accept mercy while it can still save them. Diminishing the stakes might feel merciful but is actually cruel if it leaves souls unconverted.

Thus, our lengthy analysis of Origen’s error is not just about a 3rd-century theologian; it is about today’s battle for souls. The perennial appeal of apokatastasis forces each age to clarify the Gospel fully. In our time, we must lovingly but firmly reassert: Hell is real and not empty; God is love and not a liar. We must hold mercy and truth together.

With that, we proceed to our conclusion, which will recapitulate our thesis in light of all that’s been said, and offer the Orthodox vision of salvation as the true symphony of love and freedom – infinitely more beautiful than Origen’s monotone.

IX. Conclusion: The Hierarchy of Love and the Final Freedom

We began by calling universalism “not merely a theological error — but an ontological deformation.” Having journeyed through Scripture, patristic thought, and modern parallels, we can now see clearly why. Apokatastasis in Origen’s sense would flatten reality’s rich contours, diluting the significance of love and freedom. It presents a cosmos where, in the end, distinctions do not matter, choices do not matter, and even the distinction between Creator and creature is blurred into an all-consuming One. This, we have argued, is a false resolution to the problem of evil, a resolution that comes at the cost of truth.

Restating the Thesis: The deep desire behind universal salvation teaching is understandable: it stems from compassion and the longing for total reconciliation. But good intentions are not enough. The universalist vision is metaphysically confused — it refuses to accept the possibility of a tragic final freedom (a beloved creature rejecting the Lover eternally) and instead imposes a human notion of “happy ending” on God’s plan, thereby diminishing the dramatic reality of personhood and love. Origen and his modern heirs, in trying to assert that God’s mercy must triumph by saving everyone, inadvertently depict a mercy that overrides freedom and truth. That is not a victory of love; it is a denial of love’s greatest gift — freedom. Our conclusion is that the desire for universal salvation is not the fruit of true Christian hope, but in fact a sentimental revolt against the very mystery of freedom that makes love meaningful. It is an attempt to be “more merciful than God,” which ends up being merciless to the dignity of creatures.

The Orthodox Vision Affirmed: In place of the monotone of apokatastasis, the Church proposes a symphony of salvation. It is universal invitation, not universal imposition. “God has consigned all to disobedience, that He may have mercy on all,” writes St. Paul (Rom 11:32) — yes, God’s mercy is extended universally. Christ’s redemptive work is sufficient for all and offered to all. The Church indeed prays that all be saved and come to knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4). But crucially, this mercy respects our response. As the great Augustine said, “He who created you without you will not save you without you.” Love honors freedom, even to the point of permitting eternal separation. Does this mean God’s will is thwarted? No — His will was to create free lovers, not robots. A free “No” is a possibility God allowed for the sake of a meaningful “Yes.” In a mysterious way, even the presence of hell in the final reckoning glorifies God’s truth and the seriousness of His creatures. It will show that God forced no one’s hand, that love cannot be compelled. Those in heaven will love God wholly; those in hell will know that it was by their own obstinacy, against God’s longing, that they are there, as even Origen admitted in theory. Thus, God’s mercy and justice are vindicated together.

Far from diminishing God’s glory, this hierarchy of love — a heaven filled with freely loving saints, and a hell filled with those who freely rejected Love — is a more awe-inspiring outcome than a universe where free will was just a temporary game and all differences dissolved. In the Orthodox liturgy, we hear: “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!” He bestows life on those who receive Him — He forces it on no one. Christ did descend into hades, shining His Light even in the depths. But, as we phrased earlier: Christ descended into hell not to erase it, but to fill it with His light for those who will turn toward it. Those who turned (the righteous of the Old Testament, perhaps the “good thief” spiritually, etc.) followed Him out in triumph. Those who would not turn (the devil and his angels, and perhaps certain hardened souls) retained hell — now lit by Christ’s presence, but experienced as torment. The point is: Christ’s victory is universal in scope (He won the keys of death and hell), but not universally appropriated by every creature’s will.

This leads to our final word: The Church’s task is to proclaim both the universality of the invitation and the urgency of the response. We do not proclaim that some are definitely damned (God alone knows each soul’s end), but we do proclaim the real possibility and the real danger of damnation, precisely out of love. It is not loving to give false assurance; it is loving to tell the truth that “the road is broad that leads to destruction, and many enter by it” (Matt 7:13) while pleading with souls to choose the narrow way of life. God, who “desires all to be saved,” has done and continues to do everything short of violating our freedom to draw us to salvation. The rest is our synergy with grace. Each of us must answer His call. For those who do — an open heaven of eternal communion. For those who persistently refuse — what more can even God do, without unmaking them? Thus, on the Last Day, the loving God will ratify each person’s choice: mercy for the repentant, separation for the obstinate. And He will wipe away every tear of the saved, and even the reality of hell will not mar the perfect happiness of those in heaven, for they will fully trust God’s goodness and justice. They will even be in accord with it, not from lack of compassion but from an all-encompassing alignment with God’s holy love, which gives freedom even to those who misuse it.

In closing, we affirm, with fear and trembling, but also with clarity: The true Christian hope is that all may be saved, coupled with the sobriety that not all will be, due to the mystery of iniquity. This hope motivates evangelism, intercession, and penance. It keeps us from despair over anyone (for we never give up on praying for their conversion). But it also keeps us from presumption, driving us to work out our salvation “with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), and to treat every decision as potentially soul-shaping for eternity. This is a hope rooted not in sentiment but in the Cross — where infinite mercy and inflexible justice met. From the Cross flows all grace to save the vilest sinner; yet the Cross also stands as judgment on all sin and a call to radical decision.

To anyone enticed by the dream of apokatastasis, we say: God’s love is indeed unimaginable in its depth — He proved it by descending into our hell on the Cross. But that very Cross teaches us that love does not compel; it invites. God’s arms are open — on the Cross and forever — but not all will rest in those arms against their will. Choose this day whom you will serve. If you choose Love, know that nothing can snatch you from His hand. If you refuse, God will not negate you — and therein lies the terror and majesty of freedom.

May we heed the full counsel of God: the kindness and the severity (Rom 11:22). In the end, only by honoring both can we truly magnify the Lord as He is. Far from being a “blot” on God’s goodness, the possibility of hell underscores the profound reality of the creatures He made — it shows He created real persons, not pawns, and gave His Son to save rather than to enslave.

And so, before the mystery of a God who “so loved the world” (John 3:16) and yet who weeps over souls that refuse Him (Luke 19:41–44), we fall silent in adoration. We choose to take Him at His word, warning and promise alike, rather than project our own instincts upon Him. We end with a final image from the Eastern liturgy: Christ stands at the doors of hell, as iconography often shows, with His hand extended to Adam and Eve. Hell is not abolished, but its gates are broken. Christ calls, “Rise from the dead, O man, for I am life of the dead.” The light streams in. Those who grasp His hand are pulled from the pit. Those who, even seeing Him, fold their arms and turn away, remain by their own counsel. Such, sadly, is the final freedom.

But as for us, today is the day of salvation. We set before every soul life and death, as Moses did (Deut 30:19). Choose life — the crucified and risen Christ — that you and all your house may live. In that eternal Life, the symphony of love will resound, world without end, and every lovingly bent knee and confessing tongue will only redound to the glory of God the Father.

In the words of the Apostle Jude: “Keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life… to the only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.”

Sources:

• Origen, De Principiis and fragments (on apokatastasis)
  
• Fifth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople II, 553 AD), Anathemas against Origen 
  
• St. John Damascene, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (on angels and will) 
  
• St. Isaac the Syrian, Ascetical Homilies (on hell as scourge of love) 
  
• St. Augustine, City of God XXI (against Origen’s indulgence) 
  
• Catholic Encyclopedia, “Apocatastasis” (overview of Origenism and Church’s stance) 
  
• Hans Urs von Balthasar, Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved?” (raised questions on universal hope)