space saving
Agreed.
Alright Jason 
^^ But don’t take that to mean we shouldn’t pre-discuss various history-of-philosophy issues. 
I was thinking regarding Christina hermeticism with its convoluted language that has appealed to some Western universalists and Russian ones too (and to Christians who were not universalists). IMHO this was an attempt to reach out for something that was already there in the earlier traditions of Eastern orthodoxy but became obscured – things like a positive idea of the possible creative role of human beings as collaborators in the work of redemption, and a truly positive idea of man’s relationship to/place in the cosmos that is God’s creation. It seems to me that St Maximums the Confessor expresses this tradition without being in any way tainted by Gnosticism, emanationism etc. It is a shame that his writings have not been more widely known in the West because they may have spared us the clumsy attempts of some to express similar ideas through Christianising the writings of Hermes Trismegistus.
See -
Worth noting perhaps that Maximus was one of the main inspirations for Balthasar’s work.
And I get the impression that in late antiquity (after the fall of Rome and during the early decades of the East/West split) the Eastern hermetic tradition really took on universalism in a major way that previously had been absent from prior hermetic groups – along with a strong refocus on ‘negative theology’, which tends to deconstruct doctrinal points for inexpressible mystical experiences.
While that isn’t gnostic exactly, I could see it being something Dr. McCly or any other doctrinaire (myself included!) would regard as suspicious and open to much bleeding and smushing of truth claims.
I’ve listened to Dr McClymond’s lecture now (before I had listened to the discussion videos only 
). Since it is an historical argument against universalism that he is focussing on I am interested. But i also feel that his lecture repays careful attention. I would like to look at it in detail over a period of time if possible (in the end, although De McClymond is evidently sincere, the result of his lecture is that he has painted universalists in very dark colours indeed). I’ve done a sort of transcription of the first part of this argument (most of it is virtually word for word). Id appreciate comments on historical and theological detail .
I’ll give you his discussion of Origen for the moment (which takes up about fifteen minutes of his lecture)
Dr McClymond Presentation – Christ between the thieves - gives a summary of historical perspective on Universalism from Dr McClymonds forthcoming book
The lecture begins with reference to controversy stirred up by Rob Bell’s ‘Love Wins’ as if the idea that given enough time all will turn to God was a new thing. McClymond asserts the older pedigree of the idea
Dr McClymond is careful to draws a distinction between universalism and the larger hope of Christian inclusivists who argue that there will be more people in heaven than we suspect – some argue for post mortem opportunities etc. Dr McClymond asserts that there is a clear difference between Inclusivists and Universalists. Inclusivists argue that everyone will have an opportunity to make a clear choice for or against Christ. Universalist argue that everyone will make the same choice for Christ. His argument in his book is not with Inclusivists– although he feels this is another important debate to be saved for another time. His argument is with Universalists.
He then gives a list fo standard reasons why the believes universalism (particularly Evangelical Universalism) to be important and dangerous - it demotivates us from evangelism etc, etc.
Then his historical analysis of universalism begins
Universalism can be traced back to ancient Gnosticism.
The first Universalists in religious history seem to have been the early y second century Alexandrian Gnostics who Origen ‘picks up on’. He names Basilides, Carpocrates and the Author of the Apocryphon of John
Universalism was born in second century Alexandria and reborn in the early modern period in London (presumably he is referring to Jane Lead).
Leszek Kołakowski (the twentieth century Polish philosopher- who was not defending the Gnostic view but describing it- writes about a notion of an evolving god: ‘God brought the universe into being so that he might grow in its body. God needs his own alienated creatures to complete his own perfection. The growth of the universe involves God himself in the historical process. Consequently God himself becomes historical. At the culmination of the process he is not what he was at the beginning. He creates a world and in reabsorbing it enriches himself.
In this world view the creature is not something ultimately separate from God. The creature is an alienated aspect of God’s own being. God cannot remain alienated from God forever; so what becomes separated is then returned back to God.
The Gnostic view of God has threefold movement - unity - diversity – unity
In the beginning there is God in his virtual unified reality.
There is a catastrophe within the inner life of God. God begins to split apart. The particles of light fall and as they fall in a metaphysical sense they fall into physical bodies. But ultimately everything that is separated must come back together again (Dr McClymond calls this the ‘boomerang theory’)
This contrasts with the Christian view of creation fall and redemption. In order to harmonise the Gnostic view and the Christian view together – which Dr McClymond suggests is what Origen attempted to do – it is necessary to collapse creation and fall in the Christian scheme together so that both represent diversity emerging out of unity.
Return to unity in Gnostic thought is correlated with redemption. The redemptive process is simply a coming together again.
In order to have primal unity you need to posit something tha doesn’t exist in scripture which is the notion of a pre-existent state. This is what we find in Origen – the idea that before souls existed in the physical realm they existed in the spiritual world in unity with God.
Ultimately Gnosticism raises a lot of questions about good and evil and whether they are fully separate (because both must emerge from the unity?).
Origen questioned God’s justice in asking why some were born poor and others were born rich and explained the inequities of this world in terms of a pre-mundane fall. In De Princips he posited:
The pre-existence of souls in communion with God
When the souls fell they were incarcerated in their physical bodies as punishment for their sins.
He suggested that the present world is one of many worlds that the souls pass through in the process of purification through fire.
He taught that even in hell the ‘lost’ have freewill to repent.
Eventually all souls will return to God even Satan and demons – and so the end is like the beginning.
Origen gave a lecture in Athens according to report in which he said that Satan will be saved. Later he said ‘I didn’t say that - only a lunatic would say that. But what Origen seems to have been saying is that Satan is not saved as Satan; he is saved as the Nagle of Light he was before the fall and in that restored state he will be reconciled to God.
The eschatology in Origen is driven by the proctology – the souls come together at the and because they were together t the beginning.
After condemnation of universalism by the 2nd council of Constantinople universalism was tolerated the East as a private opinion
Augustine influence in the West effectively outlawed it.
Orthodox writers – Greek and Russian in the nineteenth century- testify that Origen and universalism were widely held to be a dangerous heresy in the Eastern Church before the twentieth century.
So does Rob though not with any details.
They both appear overtly on the board in the 2nd century, along with ALL OTHER THEOLOGY! 
It’s exactly like saying that ECT can be traced back to the 2nd century.
More like whom Origen “picks on”. Especially on the topic of Christ’s actual salvation of all sinners from sin, which he contrasts to their non-universalism on the ground that (in effect) their puny Christs aren’t worth believing in compared to the high-Christology (proto-)orthodox Christ he’s preaching Who, being God Most High Incarnate, can and will triumphantly save all sinners.
In his Commentary on Matthew 1c, Origen complains that Basilides taught transmigration of souls by death, and also complained that this was the only punishment taught by B. Origen’s teacher Clement was demonstrably not a fan of Basilides either.
Dr. Ramelli, starting on page 87 of her recent Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, summarizes her lengthy 2012 article “Apokatastasis in Coptic Gnostic Texts from Nag Hammadi and Clement’s and Origen’s Apokatastasis: Toward an Assessement of the Origin of the Doctrine of Universal Restoration,” Journal of Coptic Studies 14 (2012), 33-45.
(P. Berolinensis 8502,1), restoration is universal, but not uniform: every nature returns to its own origin, different from that of the others.] Moreover, “Gnostic” apokatastasis is generally not holistic, since it is conceived as the restoration of the soul and does not include the resurrection of the body as well (as it is in the case, instead, with Origen, Gregory Nyssen, Maximus [the Confessor], and several Fathers who entertained a “holistic” conception of resurrection-restoration). …]
For this reason, “Gnostic” apokatastasis is very different from Origen’s and his followers’ apokatastasis, which is both universal and holistic. However, the presence of a notion of apokatastasis in some Gnostic works as well, such as the Tripartite Tractate, which admits it for both the [spiritual] and the [animal people], very probably contributed to foment accusations of Gnosticism against Origen. In this connection, it is paradoxical that the Tripartate Tractate provides one of the most explicit examples of the Valentinian division of humanity into three natures or {genê}, which Origen spent his life to combat… [and] could not endorse.
Later after going into much detail about Origen’s beliefs and their scriptural precedents (including Origen’s scriptural refs), she continues:
(Dr. R’s Latin quotations skipped. She mentions in footnote 416 that Origen’s patron Ambrose of Alexandria was notoriously ex-Valentinian, but the point is that Ambrose converted thanks to Origen.)
I’ll post up more as I get to it.
Interesting stuff, would be interesting to see how this guy would respond if this rebuttal was to be shown to him
Very interesting Jason 
I’ll wait until you’ve posted more to see if I can think of anything else
Wonderful stuff Dick and Jason!
I’m following along with interest and appreciate your thoughtful critiques and hard work.
Thanks!
All’s I’ve done is tormented myself by listening and transcribing thus far (quelle vacance - and I think it was James who first suggested someone did this - cheers mate ) - it’s Jason who is contributing the wonderful stuff
Sobor,
Not so! – you had very helpful and interesting historical reports upthread (or so I’d say).
As I was telling Sobor elsewhere recently, Origen’s whole point in preaching a maximally high Christology was that people outside orthodoxy had a wimpy idea of Christ, and Origen’s soteriology (also the three or four people we can trace his ideas back through, not counting canonical authorities like St. Paul) was based on that utter supremacy.
In other words, because Origen had such a high Christology, therefore he believed Christ could and would save all sinners from sin and back into loyalty to God – and without violating the miracle of their free will, even though that would mean taking eons of eons for some sinners. That wasn’t only the basis of Origen’s interpretation of scriptures like 1 Cor 15; after (and thanks to) Origen, this became one of the standard arguments used by trinitarians vs heretic Christologies.
In other words, our Christ is more awesome than your sucky, puny Christ, because our Christ can and will save all His enemies: that’s evidence (via Origen and those he inspired, for centuries afterward) of the truth of orthodox high Christology.
The importance of human free will in Origen’s high Christology, was also something he deployed against Gnostic (and Stoic) predestinationism.
One of Dr. R’s citations of Origen against the Gnostics sounds like something a Calvinist wouldn’t want to hear : “Everything is assigned by God, the absolutely righteous and impartial sovereign of the universe, according to the merits, the capacity, the activity, and the intelligence of each one …] otherwise we shall incur the stupid and impious myths of [Dr. R’s emphases] those who imagine different spiritual natures, therefore created by different creators, whereas it is absurd to attribute the creation of different rational natures even just to one and the same Creator …] they cannot explain the cause of diversity among them. …] These claims are refuted and rejected by the argument expounded above [Princ. 1,5,7], which demonstrates that the cause of diversity and variety in the single creatures depends on their quicker or slower movements towards the Good or evil, and not on a partiality of the One who has ordered all.” i.e., God doesn’t create the Calvinistic reprobate, creatures doomed from the outset only to do evil by God’s authoritative choice never to empower them with even the possibility of doing good; no moreso than multiple gods create different classes of being.
In the same footnote (421, p 159), Dr. R then cites an example of Origen’s specific refutations of Gnostic claims: “They claim that Paul and Peter belonged to the spiritual nature”, the class of {pneumatikoi}, but Origen observes that Paul was initially a persecutor and Peter denied Christ. The Gnostic way of evading the problem, to maintain that it was another Paul, or another Peter, to sin in him, is invalid, since both apostles were then contrite, thus showing their responsibility.
Dr. R, pp164-165:
This utter supremacy of the high-Christology Christ, is also (per Dr. R p 169) why Origen adamantly opposed the idea that Christ’s sacrifice would have to be repeated over and over again. While Origen was later accused of holding this notion, he himself opposed people in his day (particularly Gnostics!) who held it, and grounded his reply on two main tenets:
1.) it is impossible that Christ’s sacrifice should be reiterated because, even though it occurred once and for all, its effectiveness was such as to reach absolutely all rational creatures and all aeons; therefore, there will be no need to repeat it; hence for Origen the salvation of all rational creatures entirely depends, not on a metaphysical necessity, but on Christ’s cross;
2.) it is impossible because (against the Stoics) the aeons do not repeat endlessly but eventually end, therefore rational creatures do not repeatedly fall forever, but rather there will come an end of all aeons, in apokatastasis, when God will be all in all, and from that condition no fall will occur any longer, once every logikon [rational soul] has reached perfection in love (some doing so earlier and some later).
In arguing this, Origen appealed to Paul’s core sentence from 1 Cor 13:8, “Love never fails”. It is love, and only by love, that a rational creature adheres to God entirely; thus once perfected in love, the creature shall never fall away again. (Adam and the rebel angels obviously did not have perfect love, and did not fall during the apokatastasis of perfected love, but fell even before Christ’s love was manifested. Adam and Lucifer were loyal to God as a ‘datum’; but perfect love prevented and prevents the Son from ever falling, Who Himself is perfect love originally and in essence. It is this shared original divine uncreated love which rational creatures are created and called to share.)
Thanks, Sobornost for a fuller (and probably less biased ) summary of the first part of McClymond’s lecture than mine. And, thanks also to Jason for bringing in the relevant sections of Ramelli’s work.
This! It seems so odd to me that McClymond is claiming that Origen picked up the heretical aspects of gnosticism when (1) Origen explicitly defines himself against the gnostics and, perhaps more importantly, (2) Origen’s writings are one of the primary sources that determined what the early Church thought was heretical about gnosticism!
I had forgotten that McClymond had mentioned Kolakowski. Kolakowski is, of course, most famous for his massive (critical) work on Marxism, although he did write a bit on religion later in his career, I think. I’m not sure where this summary of gnosticism is coming from in his works, although I think it is worth pointing out that it specifically seems to emphasize the areas of contact between gnosticism and Hegelianism, which Kolakowski would be particularly interested in because of its connection to Marxism. And we can see how McClymond might also use Kolakowski similarly to how we think he will use O’Regan in tying universalists to Hegel and thus to gnosticism.
Edit: took out some stuff because it was overly-long, and I realized it was pretty much just repeating what I’ve said in earlier posts.
For whatever it is worth, Dr. R does not seem to mention either of those Gnostics, nor that text. This may be only a convenience, though, as I know from other sources that Origen opposed Basilides (and precisely on a point Dr. McCly would want opposed) as noted above. Clement of Alexandria certainly opposed Carpocrates: he and Irenaeus (who taught the final salvation of all humans although the annihilation of devils, as Dr. Ramelli strongly demonstrates), in opposing Carpocrates, are the only reason we know anything about him now! But probably Dr. R does not mention Clement opposing Carpocrates because Clement had other specific vices in mind than would be relevant for her book.
Just a moment ago I saw in a footnote that Dr. R mentions Clement fighting the Gnosticism of Basilides; so she does mention him at least once, and not in any way which involves positive inspiration from B to Clem or Or.
The Apocryphon of John was so “influential” that only Irenaeus bothered to mention it (in opposition), and practically nothing was known of it until the Nag Hammadi excavation. The author is a Sethian Gnostic, and holds many positions Origen (and Clement, and their predecessors) utterly and demonstrably rejected when found in other teachers, such as Christ being one of the Aeons, and having been the one to lead Adam to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil which Christ tries to feed to Adam to free him from the false garden of Eden created by the Satan analogue to tempt and entrap Adam – completely reversing practically every relevant detail of the Genesis fall story. The rebel chief archon is also the one responsible for the flood, btw; so the god of the OT is basically recast as Yaldaboth. There is a salvation from hades, sort of, except hades is the human body. There is no indication that unrighteous spirits will be saved back into the Pleroma; and the rebel angels and most humans are not allowed repentance but are eternally punished (possibly by annihilation); and Jesus instructs John to only pass these secret teachings along to other spiritual persons like himself (with the others being destroyed by the chaos of their bodies), so even the salvation of all humankind is voided.
This is not a universalistic text by any stretch of the imagination; and by no stretch of the imagination would Clement or Origen have had any more patience with this work than Irenaeus did (though he probably didn’t know of the work in the 4th century forms it survives in via Nag Hammadi.)
Maybe Dr. McClym got bored and confused slogging through the few pages of the text (here let the enlightening light of the lightening one ENLIGHTEN YOU OR WHATEVER ), and decided what the heck he’d just make up some things about it? His application of it as an inspiration to early patristic universalists reminds me strongly of various anti-Christian scholars who try to pretend that the Gnostic Gospels are somehow superior in any way to (and perhaps even directly inspired the) canonical Gospels.
Or maybe he mixed it up with the Apocalypse of Peter, which Clement and Origen did demonstrably have a high opinion of (and which purportedly reported teachings of Peter to Clement of Rome), and which does have some arguably universalistic passages, though nothing nearly so strong as would be found even in Irenaeus.
Yes it is interesting that he uses Kolakowski at this point by way of introduction to Gnosticism. I think that strictly speaking – although he find the quotation somehow illustrative - it is actually unhelpful and shows a lack of attention to the detail of history. Because the Gnostics that Origen combated – or in Dr McClymond’s view was ‘inspired by’ - had absolutely no interest in history since history is about things that happen in time, and time like matter for them was the creation of an inferior god which ‘gnosis ‘ of our divine origins liberate us from.
Yes he does seems to be dropping a hint here that ‘Gnosticism’ is a phenomena that we can see recurring throughout the history of Western civilisation – and that it is possible to label everything bad as Gnostic (and put universalism in the same trash can). So although he does not explicitly refer to the anti-Gnostic method of doing cultural history here I think it is implicit in this comment and several others (and one of the annoying things about this lecture is the number of times he makes dark hints without saying things explicitly – which is why it is hard at first to give him the fair hearing which he deserves). As I said above the trouble with this historiography is that people just seem to label anything they don’t happen to like as Gnostic and imply that there is a clear battle between cultural forces of good and evil, orthodoxy and Gnosticism, rationalism and irrationalism, freedom ad totalitarianism that we can trace through the course of Western History (rather than a more variegated and muddled affair). Eric Voeglin – the famous practitioner of this method - was a Catholic and described Calvinism as Gnostic on the grounds of its anti-ecclesial individualism and its dualist evaluation of the sacramental reality of the material world. I think likewise that Koalkowski may have seen the idea of an end state for history in which all contradictions are resolved as akin to Gnostic schema and a sort of blueprint for totalitarianism (no one is free to opt out of the final perfection?). Btu he was not a religious writer – he was a self professed agnostic and he had scathing thing to say about Jansenism – the nearest thing the Catholic Church ever had to a Calvinist movement – as a religion of unhappy people that simply made them more unhappy.
That’s me for the moment because I think - hope – that Jason has some other important observations to make (going by our PM discussion). I intend to look a the entire lecture because I think it is food for a really interesting and useful discussion, and it’s great that you started this Arelnite
And I said to the savior, “Lord, will all the souls then be brought safely into the pure light?” He answered and said to me, “Like hell no or words to that effect, only those people I descend to will be saved, and I only descend on the true spiritual men. Sucks to be those other men on whom the counterfeit spirit descends, but they get no chance of repentance. Blame the counterfeit spirit for that.”
I’m paraphrasing a bit, but I expect Dr. McCly only read so far where Jesus answers the question of whether those on whom the power/spirit descends will be rejected even though they don’t do the works of the spirit, with the reply that “(If) the Spirit (descended upon them), they will in any case be saved, and they will change (for the better). For the power will descend on every man, for without it no one can stand.” But the context shows pretty clearly that by “every man” the author means “every actually real spiritual man”. The non-elect don’t even get a chance for redemption because the Spirit never descends on them; but don’t worry they weren’t really real men after all.
I can see why Dr. McCly would be upset at Clement and Origen and other universalists opposing this idea; but that’s because so far as it goes the basic concept is Calvinistic, not universalistic! They absolutely did not accept this idea, nor were they inspired by it.
To be fair, Augustine and ‘orthodox’ Christian Calvinists weren’t inspired by texts like this either. It’s just a similar way of accounting for why some souls are permanently damned. But the text is utterly the reverse of much of what Origen (and Clement et al) taught, and for Dr. McCly to refer to it as a universalistic text which inspired early universalists is at best wildly incompetent.