APOCATASTASIS

APOCATASTASIS. Fully, apocatastasis panton is “the restoration of all things.” The source of this phrase, i.e., that all things and beings (angels and demons included) will ultimately be restored to unity with God, is 1Cor 15, when God will be “all in all.” Its best-known advocate was Origen of Alexandria, though Gregory of Nyssa (qq.v.) a century later echoed the latter’s views on this issue. The proposal that hell cannot be eternal is surely to be ascribed to a certain optimism, with origins in Platonism, that evil cannot reasonably have the last word for any rational creature. Although this doctrine was condemned by the Council of Constantinople (553), it took the work of Maximus the Confessor (q.v.) a century later to demonstrate that true respect for the depths of human freedom (q.v.) requires the possibility of an everlasting perdition. Fear of a revival of the doctrine also lay behind the initial Greek reaction to the Latin Church’s doctrine of purgatory, worked out in the 13th c. The latter’s “purifying fire” smacked all too much for the Greek bishops at the Reunion Council of Ferrara-Florence (q.v.) of Origen’s view that hell was temporary. While it is possible to give an Orthodox reading of the Latin teaching, it is also the case that the latter, based as it was (is?) on ideas of penalty and satisfaction, would itself have to undergo a certain evolution in order to satisfy Orthodox concerns.