If i did that, it was unintentional! Don’t torture yourself on my account! If anything, i would’ve suggested that i should watch it. i wouldn’t inflict that on you!
Though i’m grateful for this discussion so far, it’s really interesting!
Very good point!
Wonderful Jason - excellent (and so interesting and informative)!
While I get on transcribing the next part which is the part where I’ll have to play a bigger role in the discussion probably - can I leave you with a few other relevant questions (and anyone can join in!!)
Didn’t Clement of Alexandrian while opposing the sectarian Gnostics speak highly of a Christian gnosis founded in pistis/faith - a more advanced form of Christian ‘knowing’ that became accessible to mature Christians practiced in ascetical disciplines? What do you understand from this?
Was Basadrian (I think that’s how you spell his name) in any way influenced by Gnosticism?
Does Dr Ramelli have anything to say about the hermetic tradition in Gnosticism? It is this form of Gnosticism that influenced some early modern Universalists but it is very different from the systems of Valentinius and co; it is far more positive about the material world.
One thing that is clear is that Origen did not think of human souls as being in union with God from the beginning but as being in communion with God (he was not a monist)
Dr McClymond does not focus on doceticism as an element of Gnosticism – the idea that Christ only seemed to take on flesh which is the corollary of the idea that flesh is actually evil. However, he does accuse Origen of believing in the unbiblical notion of the pre-existence of souls. I’ve always assumed from the little I’ve read that this was so and that Origen believed that human souls were created as souls but when they sinned became enfleshed as an act of punishment and an act of mercy (to limit the extent of the fall into chaos). But I could be wrong (well I know I’m a bit off kilter actually 
).
I have read that an idea found in Philo of Alexandria influenced pre-existence of souls theology. Namely that there are two creation narratives in Genesis and while the first tells of the creation of the world in the realm of spiritual ideas, the second tells the story of the fall into a material universe because of man’s disobedience. I’ve also heard that the verse in Genesis 1about man being created in the image of God as male and female was interpreted as meaning humans were androgynous in their pre-fall spiritual state and that sexual generation was a result of the fall. My knowledge here is very woolly -any thoughts?
Any thoughts about Dr McClymond’s comments regarding Origen, Gnosticism and the salvation of the devil?
Any thoughts about his assertion that universalism was merely a tolerated option held by a few individuals in the early Church? He also makes some sweeping statements about the condemnation of universalism by Church Councils?
Any thoughts about the influence of Manichean Gnosticism on Augustine – Dr McClymod does not question Augustine’s orthodoxy?
Finally any thoughts on the rejection of Origen by the Church of the East in the nineteenth century? I had hear that at this time it was actually semi-colonised by Augustinian Christianity at least this is the claim made by some notable Orthodox theologians in the twentieth century like Romanidies who wrote ‘The Ancestral Sin’
All the best
Dick
I’m at the house now, not the office, so I’m going by memory. But yes he did speak highly of a Christian gnosis, not in the sense of special knowledge of doctrine or passcard/password information to get one into salvation, but a knowledge of love learned by discipline, which also allows a person to interact better with the world and with other people. For Clement (and other “Christian Gnostics” of this sort) this knowledge was identical with coming to have a greater personal relationship with, and cooperation with, God. It wasn’t anything categorically different from what a good old Southern Baptist preacher might exhort his congregation about attaining to, just different ways of putting the same thing – and based of course on St. Paul and how he used the term ‘gnosis’.
Bardaisan (I keep forgetting how to spell his name, too. 
) Dr. Ramelli argues very much not, unless by “influenced” one means “influenced to kick their butts repeatedly and at length so that authors down as far as Jerome a few hundred years later praised him for his orthodox attacks on the heretics”. 
And that was after his U-turn vs. Origen, if I recall the timing correctly – although as Rufinus sarcastically pointed out in their controversy Jerome kept on venerating known Christian universalists so long as they weren’t Origen. ) She wrote a whole book on the topic before publishing the Tome, though I’ve only read her notes in the Tome. On her account he was certainly the first systematic Christian universalist, or the first one to approach being systematic about it, and very probably one of Clement’s tutors. (He at least praises an unnamed Syrian who sounds like Bardaisan.)
Not in the Tome, although she probably discusses the connections elsewhere. My impression, right or wrong, is that Gnosticism flourished in cities where there was a wider possibility of fishing for elite spiritual beings. 
But they were often ascetic, and even the occasional hedonist groups did so out of a weird bass-ackward asceticism.
If so, my impression is that it must come from a time after Justinian clamped down more-or-less successfully against universalism. But she’s working on a whole book about Gnostic and pagan apokatastasis notions during the early centuries, so maybe she’ll talk about early hermetic Gnostics there.
Right, if by human souls you mean Adam and Eve and the angels, whom he put more-or-less on par originally as having spiritual bodies though not being what we would call the same species. (He was charged later with teaching the idea that human spirits pre-exist in a bodiless state and then when they sin they’re sent into bodies as punishment, but that runs against a lot of things he said otherwise.)
Still yes, that was a big difference between the Gnostic and the Orthodox parties: the Gnostics foresaw returning to a choir all singing the same note (so to speak) while the Orthodox foresaw the building (and in some cases the returning, so far as they believed in the salvation of rebel angels) of a symphonic orchestra choir. Origen is absolutely on the side of the orthodox party here, and a big factor in his (and their) beliefs on that matter involves the importance of free will in orthodox theology during the first several hundred years, over against the typical Gnostic distaste for, or denial of, free will. (Tolkien picks up this idea for the backstory of his Middle Earth milieu, btw.)
No, Origen didn’t believe that; he was charged with it on occasion, particularly by Jerome through bad translations, and then by Justinian (by what amounted to bad re-translation and secondhand inattention); although to be fair there does appear to have been unorthodox groups who naturally picked up Origen and ran with him in such directions (much as they did with St. John’s work).
(We talked about this a little in pm, so I’m reiterating for public purposes what I already said there. ) Dr. Ramelli argues extensively from the primary sources that Origen believed Adam and Eve had been created male and female with spiritual bodies, not as disembodied spirits, but with bodies similar to those of the angels. Once they sinned, God transfigured their bodies to animal status – which is how Origen read the Genesis accounts of being naked (which he accepted literally enough) and then being given goat-skin clothes. Origen wasn’t unique in this among contemporary orthodox teachers, and in fact his ideas on the topic aren’t really much different from what any orthodox teacher (so far as they believe in a literal Adam and Eve) have taught up to the present day. The way he put it was rather exotic, and that got him into some trouble because people would misunderstand him, and of course being the ROMAN EMPIRE’S FOREMOST INTELLECTUAL AUTHORITY during his day and long afterward EVEN AMONG THE PAGANS (which is important to keep in mind) he was conveniently picked up and used by all kinds of groups (except those he directly attacked, although sometimes even them) to support their beliefs. But he didn’t believe human beings were disembodied spirits who existed in some higher nature until they sinned and were sent to earth and given bodies as punishment; the closest he came to that was concerning Adam and Eve, not all humans, and he regarded them as having bodies like the resurrected (or maybe transfigured) Christ.
He even talked about how for love’s sake creatures who haven’t sinned may descend to earth and take bodies to help the evangelism of Christ, but he meant angels taking on heavier bodies (or possibly the saints before the resurrection). Which again is not really different from what most Southern Baptist or Presbyterian preachers teach in effect (except minus the saints returning to help of course. )
I don’t recall offhand how close Origen’s idea is to Philo, whom he admired to some extent and also heavily criticized where he thought Philo’s ideas contradicted with orthodox Christology (as naturally they would eventually to some degree). He definitely disagreed with the notion of disembodied spiritual ideas, and I’m pretty sure he disagreed with Adam and Eve having (or representing) original androgyny, although if I recall correctly he didn’t think God originally intended humans to reproduce sexually. I’ll try to look that up tomorrow. (He didn’t regard animal sexuality as being an inherently bad thing, just not God’s ultimate plan for humanity therefore causing problems in the meanwhile. On this point he also strongly opposed the Gnostics who even when occasionally hedonistic regarded all physicality, thus also animal reproduction, as inherently evil.)
Certainly no one and no text cited by Dr. McCly as Gnostic, so far, talks about the salvation of the devil! Origen definitely did, although sometimes he presented it in a “zetatic” form of theological speculation where he offered ideas for readers to ponder and come to conclusions on themselves. More often he taught it straight out, though. In fact he opposed some Gnostics on precisely this point, because they didn’t teach the salvation of evil spirits back into loyal communion with God!
Origen didn’t teach that the devil would be saved without his own free repentance, much less that the devil would enter heaven as the devil per se (still in rebellion); and he didn’t teach that the devil would avoid God’s eschatological punishment, but rather that Satan would be punished for longer than anyone else because it would take that long for him to finally give up and learn better! There is some dispute over whether he taught that the devil would return as Lucifer to his authority as second-in-command over Nature (under Christ of course); but the confusion probably comes because he taught that the devil hasn’t stopped being by nature an archangel (having morally perverted and abused and misused what is still a fundamentally good nature created by God), and when he is finally saved he’ll be a saved archangel and not, say, a snake or whatever. For some people this naturally sounded like Origen meant Lucifer would have the authoritative position proper to an archangel, since that kind of heavenly hierarchy was an important feature of early Christianity for several centuries.
If you can call dozens of high ranking orthodox teachers and clergy, including most of the men responsible for teaching the teachers of Christianity, and for running the unofficial version of what later became the Congregation of the Doctrine i.e. the Inquisition, who more than any other group helped work out and clarify orthodox trinitarian theism over-against non-orthodox notions of God, and who went on to write most of the ancient hymns still used by the Eastern Orthodox, merely “tolerated”, then sure. They were only a few individuals in the sense that proportionate to the total number of Christians only a few individuals were presidents and founders of the only catechetical seminaries of ancient Christendom and bishops and saints and doctors of the church and THE FATHER OF ORTHODOXY THE ORTHODOX OF THE ORTHODOX. Not many Gregory Nyssas out there. (Not many early Augustines either for that matter!)
But only ignorance or desperation would regard them as being isolated off in a corner doing their thing. They may have been only a strong minority among Christian authorities (I still don’t go so far as Hanson), but they were a STRONG minority who contributed tons to the Christianity practiced today by Protestants, Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox alike.
Not by any Ecumenical Council before the schism between East and West, at which point the notion of an Ecumenical Council becomes rather dotty. Universalism was condemned pretty broadly by Justinian’s local Constantinople synod (via his pet archbishop Mennas), and by Pope Vigilus ratifying Justinian’s anathemas afterward. But it wasn’t condemned by the next Ecumenical Council, despite the anathemas being read during the opening meeting, and despite several Christian universalists being condemned for supposedly deviant Christologies – condemnations which have in recent decades been retracted as mistakes and political gamesmanship (though the principles of the deviant Christologies remain condemned, just that Origen and Theodore and even Nestorius didn’t really hold them). The actual draft of the Ecumenical resolutions of condemnation quote Origen and Theodore making pretty standard and well-known universalistic arguments, but only as evidence of false Christologies; the soteriology was not condemned, nor even remarked upon, and the bishops there would have known from common exposure what those arguments amounted to because (again this has to be stressed) Origen and Theodore were the great anti-heretic orthodox scholars of their times, famous across the Roman Empire, disciples of the founders of (competing) catechetical universities (and their offshoots), and presidents of those universities themselves, responsible for training the people who taught new Christians how to be Christians. Their methods were standard (if also somewhat competing) methods known by everyone and used by everyone so far as possible; and they were admired for their work to a degree that eclipses any modern name from Luthor onward. These were not men muttering in a corner, but famous evangelists and apologists of their times, champions against Gnostics and Arians. If the bishops quoted their universalist arguments in a text designed to attack their Christologies (after lauding their Christologies to the skies in prior decades and centuries), without mention of censure for the universalism of the arguments, it wasn’t because they didn’t recognize the arguments – though they didn’t necessarily agree with them either, of course.
It’s tempting to think Augustine relapsed in his old age back to a near Manichean view of good and evil, but Dr. Ramelli thinks it was more a result of opposing Pelagius whom Augustine (very wrongly) thought followed Origen. Augustine in his early phase deployed typical Origenian arguments against Manichees and other heretics, with obvious universalistic conclusions; but never seems to have recognized where he got the arguments from, and (despite Dr. R’s analysis) may not have even realized in his inexperience what they really amounted to. For some unknown reason by the time he started up against Pelagius in his middle phase Augustine had dropped any apparent universalism in his arguments, but in effect started sparring with Pelagius over what the gospel assurances really were in the face of final perdition after all. He kept the assurance of victorious persistence, but then had to deny the assurance of operative scope; in his final years this hardened into a view of election and consequent non-election, familiar to Calvinists, but I don’t think he ever really went back to a Gnosticism and certainly not to a Manichean dualism: his gospel assurance was predicated on the ultimate unique authority of God after all, not an appeal to God/Anti-God.
Does he mean the Eastern Orthodox? They take their Ecumenical Councils seriously in contradistinction to infallible papal authority, and after all the whole point to Justinian’s machinations did eventually succeed: Origen had been condemned (though not for universalism) at an Ecumenical Council, and his universalism was thus condemned by associative proxy though not de facto. What were Orthodox bishops supposed to say about him?!
The 20th century reflux of Orthodox scholarship on this point is due to better historical scholarship, not due to the EOx being even more mystically vague and absent-minded than they already were. I’m certainly confused why anyone would appeal to 19th century historians over-against late 20th century ones considering the advances made in communication and access to texts.
Still, I’m not read up on the history of EOx opinions about universalism, though they can be as shockingly ignorant as anyone else: I recall an Arminian scholar not long ago saying that an EOx clergyman had informed him that Gregory Nyssa wasn’t regarded as a saint precisely because of his universalism, which is factual nonsense. (True, Gregory isn’t regarded as a doctor, but he has his own unique titles and “doctor” in the EOx doesn’t have quite the same formal cachet as in the West.)
Thanks so much for your reply Jason - that’s wonderful
Yes he actually means Greek and Russian Orthodox theologians (Church of the East can mean lots of thing and I think it’s my term rather than his 
)
Sobornost asked me to do a pithy summary of what I thought to be the most relevant points of the lecture.
Regarding the gnosticism and Origen section, he says that Origen holds to this “boomerang” theory in which, as McClymond presents it, that which falls away must, because it was in original unity with God, must once again be re-united to God. And, the way in which this “forces” Origen to posit the first “spiritual” creation.
Regarding the early modern and Boehme section, I think, as Sobornost has rightfully pointed out, that we might question why at least some modern universalists appear to have been influenced by Boehme. Additionally, the esoteric influences in universalism could deserve a response.
He really only hints at this, but I think it is legitimate to question the influence of Hegel on theology, just as it is probably correct to legitimately question the influence of any single thinker on theology.
Regarding 19th and 20th century theology, McClymond said he would show how Barth’s doctrine of election is gnostic, although he never did. I would like to hear the argument.
One of the funnier things, however, that I noticed upon re-watching the lecture was how McClymond, at multiple points, seems to raise questions for his own view! For example, he blames universalists for identifying divine justice and love, which is actually just how many (if not most) of the great theologians viewed divine simplicity! Since God is one, all of God’s attributes are merely phenomenally different to us, but, in reality, all point to the same thing: the divine essence and its activity in the world. The bigger question seems to be: what’s his view of divine simplicity?
Okay, getting back to Sobor’s original summary of Dr. McCly’s lecture…
I’m not sure that accurately describes the various Gnostic groups broadly speaking. To start with, all the ones I’ve ever read or heard of would principally reject the idea of God-becoming-historical. The various Aeons (among them chiefly Christ) were NOT regarded as God Most High, Who could not and would not touch the inherently evil and corrupt or at least imperfect material world. (Marcion is a semi-exception to this, as his Christology is relatively high; but then again he was a semi-exception in other regards, too, to the degree of being highly debateable whether he should count as Gnostic: there are good arguments pro and con.) And Gnostic groups, rather like pantheists, generally looked toward the reunification of spirits back into the Pleroma or Monad, in a sense that destroyed the personal distinctions of the persons. As I reported Dr. Ramelli putting it in her Tome, the Gnostics wanted a return to one note being sung by all the divinity; the Orthodox looked for a symphony based on creaturely experience – but neither group seems to have thought God Himself would evolve or improve by this method or in any other way.
In other words, the second paragraph quoted is fairly accurate to Gnostic beliefs broadly speaking, over against the first paragraph, which sounds more like modern 20th/21st century promotion of Gnosticism by quasi-Gnostic scholars (Pagels etc.) trying to make the groups ‘relevant’ to ‘modern’ people in competition with orthodox Christianity. Or possibly someone trying to make the Gnostics sound more like what certain early patristics believed in order to make those certain early patristics sound more Gnostic.
It must be stressed however that Clement and Origen (and Bardaisan and by Clement’s brief accounts Pantaneus) would have rejected and fought against almost all the points of either paragraph, and demonstrably did so, no less than Irenaeus before Clem/Org, and no less than Athanasius the Great and Gregory Nyssus and Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia afterward – all of whom were strong universalists or in Ath’s case a strong admirer and promoter of strong universalists (Origen and Didymus the Blind) if not quite a universalist himself. (Or in Ir’s case a demonstrable near universalist, for believing all humans would be saved at last after purgative post-mortem where necessary.) The only thing the early (and later patristic) universalists would have agreed on is the one point where the Gnostics would have signally disagreed, namely the idea that a person’s experiences contribute to their final beatitude leading to a final symphony of distinct persons. (And most Gnostic groups and teachers in my experience would and did disagree with the early universalists over Christ actually saving all sinners from sin: a point the orthodox universalists hammered them on as evidence of the supremacy of the orthodox Christ.)
Agreed; which is the immediate disagreement with Clement, Origen and other orthodox teachers whose idea of “unity” involved distinctions of Persons united in the one and only deity.
Utterly rejected by Clement, Origen, etc.
Utterly rejected by Clement, Origen, etc.
Utterly rejected by Clement, Origen, etc.
Partially rejected by Clement, Origen, etc., who explicitly and repeatedly appealed to both love and the importance of free will over against the deterministic boomeranging of Gnosticism (so to speak) just as much as against the repetitive boomeranging of the Stoic eons.
Defended by Clement, Origen, etc.
Various Gnostics did try to do that (not all Gnostic systems even bothered with Christ or thought Him overly important even if they did syncretistically include Him in their systems, so didn’t have much of anything even resembling a Christian scheme of dealing with sin). But Origen (and Clement etc.) regarded the diversity of sin as antithetical to true creation, and a perversion of God’s creation, thus that kind of diversity must and shall eventually be destroyed by God. They stamped just as hard on the Gnostic identification of creation with the fall, as anyone else Dr. McClym would care to name – to the point that, especially in Origen’s case, their attacks against Gnostics on this point became the orthodox methodological standard for centuries.
Mostly rejected by Clement, Origen, etc., who did not preach any “simple” “coming together again”. They did preach repentance from sin (by free will responding to discipline and instruction) and so returning to a true union of cooperative persons, just like EVERY OTHER ORTHODOX TEACHER EVER – the only difference between them and non-universalist orthodox teachers on that point is the final score of who returns to faithful loyalty and to justice: a final totality of victorious salvation from sin which, it must be stressed, the orthodox universalists threw against their Gnostic opponents as evidence of the superiority of the orthodox notion of God and Christ.
Origen was charged with this based on faulty translations, and because some groups after him took that position supposedly based on his authority. In-depth modern scholarship (such as with Dr. Ramelli) demonstrates decisively that Origen didn’t believe in a non-physical pre-existence of spirits (even for angels, but rather that only God alone can and does exist as pure spirit), and didn’t believe most persons exist in a pre-material state from which they fall into creation. The closest he comes to that idea is Adam and Eve (as distinct gendered persons) being created with spiritual bodies and then being given animal bodies after their fall so that they would die. Their children don’t pre-exist as spirits to fall into creation, much less as disembodied spirits originally.
Even if Origen (and other universalists) had actually believed in disembodied pre-existent spirits, though, their idea of sin, the fall, and original unity would have been still categorically and demonstrably different from the Gnostics, as noted above.
Agreed, but Dr. McCly ought to be aiming that comparative spotlight at the Calvinist notions of God’s creation of non-elect persons whom He gives no power at all to even have a choice toward being good. Clement, Origen etc. struck down Gnostics on precisely the point that their systems (even if sometimes unintentionally) often involved evil starting at the level of God Most High Himself, in a literally schizophrenic fashion.
Only in terms of a pre-mundane fall of Adam and Eve resulting in such inequities for their children born afterward – due to freely chosen injustices by their children after birth (not before their birth) as well as impulses from the corrupted nature of fallen humanity passed along through human birth.
This phraseology is somewhat misleading. Origen argued for his positions, he didn’t simply posit them.
Only in the same senses any Church of Christ or Southern Baptist preacher would put it. (Adam and Eve lived in perfect bodies; all angels were originally unfallen, none created evil, but rebelled.) The only difference is that the modern preachers would tend to deny that angels have bodies, whereas Origen explicitly taught angels have spiritual bodies because only God can exist as pure unembodied spirit.
Meaning Adam and Eve, and in somewhat different ways the rebel angels, whose spiritual bodies are exchanged for bodies which can and do die.
Sort of; he meant distinct eons of time (of an indeterminate number), apparently thinking that each eon will be distinguished by who repents and who stays fondling their sins as well as by how far those who stay in sin have been led (by the trinitarian Persons and by redeemed and unfallen evangelists) toward the good. He doesn’t mean “worlds” in the sense that the Gnostics typically did, like rising up through levels of the spheres, shedding material forms as they quasi-physically ascend.
He did indeed teach this and strongly emphasize it, a point hotly denied by the Gnostics he fought against, who weren’t big on the idea of free will at all (since free will arguably ruined the perfection of the emanations of the Monad), and certainly didn’t give a hoot about whether the non-spiritual elite slated for permanent destruction (annihilation or ETC) ever had free will.
Origen definitely taught the eventual repentance of all sinners, up to and including Satan – though he sometimes presented it as a thought exercise for readers to come to their own conclusions about, and sometimes he allowed that the typical street peon ought to be taught eternal conscious torment because they would probably misunderstand universal salvation to mean no one gets punished for sins at all.
Origen did NOT teach the Gnostic idea of ‘return to God’, as noted above. Consequently, neither did he teach the end is like the beginning in the Gnostic sense. He taught that creation would be improved (and so be better than the beginning) from the perspective of creation, which all orthodox teachers also taught; and he taught that God would not be improved by this operation, which all orthodox teachers also taught. (And to be fair, even Gnostic teachers didn’t think the Monad would be improved in any way by the results of reunification, so far as I’ve ever seen from them.)
I’m not sure where this “nagle of light” terminology is coming from – possibly Sobornost mistyped Angel. Otherwise, this is accurate. Moreover, most of the resistance to Origen’s universalism in subsequent centuries stemmed from the misunderstanding that he meant Satan would enter heaven as Satan unrepentant, or that Satan would be saved without repentance, or that Satan wouldn’t be punished at all, or that Satan would go back to being second in command under God – none of which Origen actually taught.
Very much wrong: the eschatology in Origen is driven by the Christology and the Trinitology (to coin a term): the souls come together at the end because the Trinity’s loving evangelism shall be super-victorious, including the Son’s operation as Christ.
If he means the local synod, convened by the notoriously corrupt politician Justinian and his pet archbishop, this is accurate. If he means the Ecumenical Council a few decades later, this is inaccurate.
So far as I know this is true, but that conflicts directly with what he says afterward about universalism widely held to be a dangerous heresy in the Eastern Church before the 20th century.
Pope Pelagius in the West, long after Augustine, effectively outlawed it by making a papal declaration endorsing Justinian’s anathemas sometime between the local Constantinople Synod and the 5th EcuCouncil some decades later. Augustine was certainly a local bishop, but he had no more authority to outlaw it in “the West” than the man in the moon, and based on his grumbling about soft-hearted Christians in his older days he apparently had no authority to outlaw it within his diocese either.
Granted, I can understand why a Calvinist might prefer to appeal to the authority of one particular pre-schism Roman Catholic bishop than to the papal authority of a Pope a century or so later during the early stages of the East/West schism, but still…
What’s funnier is that this division of divine love and divine justice is one of those points the patristic universalists (and orthodox patristics generally) shotgunned their Gnostic opponents about. Isn’t Dr. McCly supposed to be warning his audience away from positions held by Gnostics and attacked by the leaders of orthodoxy???
I’d say the best practical response is to give them no account and to work without them. Which plenty of universalists do. However, I suspect from his methodologies that Dr. McCly is acting like a Jesus Mythicist and explaining characteristics found in a larger more influential group with a longer history, as though they were inspired by a much more limited group or person who has a demonstrable history of picking up and applying notions from larger groups while having no authority in the larger group under examination, but who can conveniently act as a scapegoat to smear the larger older and more established group by innuendo.
Within a certain trajectory of categorical theology, sure. But even within that trajectory, the influence ends in proportion to opposition to Hegel. It would be silly to project Hegel’s influence outside that trajectory however; and if Hegel picked up his dialectic of history from the CENTURIES LONG INFLUENCE of orthodox Christian historicism, especially if he modified it, then why would anyone bother attributing to Hegel the beliefs of people who are picking up (especially without Hegel’s rather drastic modifications) their notions of Christian historicism from the wide river of orthodox culture?!
If it’s like his argument for Origen’s gnosticism, Barthian scholars are going to nuke him from orbit and rightly so.
Still, he definitely has the Three Big Bs of 20th century systematic theology targeted (Barth, Bulgakov, Balthasar). Can’t fault him on understanding who he’s up against!
You picked up on the ‘nagle’ Jason but you missed the funniest typo I made. I wrote ‘proctology’ instead of ‘protology’ (the latter is medical expertise about diagnosis and treatment of bottom afflictions I understand). And that was an accident
Brilliant summary!
I’ll have a look at the real conspiracy theory stuff next about the Boehmenists 
Hi All -
Michael McClymond claims that all modern (western) universalism can be traced back to the German theosopher Jackob Boehme and his seventeenth and eighteenth century followers – he says that they had all read Boehme or were reading each other. He is aware that he might be charged with trying to pull a ‘guilt by association’ stunt - but he thinks he has a compelling case. He talks about using Google as his research tool for his detective work. The thing about using Google is that you are always in danger of finding exactly what you are searching for. He set out to do a polemical piece against Christian universalism. He found the evidence he needed by following the links. We’ve all been there – I know I have. But any scholar who is doing an objective enquiry needs to begin with the standard authorities on the subject – works by people who really know their primary sources and that have stood the test of time and critical debate. Michael McClymond has clearly not read D.P.E Walker’s ‘Decline of Hell’ for example– if he had done so he would have avoided his mistakes.
I think everybody will be bored rigid if I take Dr McClymond apart in detail here– so for the sake of argument you’ll have to trust me that I have read Walker and a few other authoritative sources (none of which would evoke the same interests as professor Ramelli’s fine tome).
Walker shows that the emergence of Universalism in the West was complex and multifaceted. He shows how the debate was going on amongst scholars in the sixteenth and seventeenth century who were often guarded about going public because they might be imprisoned or killed.
His gallery of proto-universalists and annihilationists contains few followers of Boehme – for example he notes –
The contributions of the Christian Humanists, Erasmus and De Clerc and Episcopus
THE Socainians
The English Arian annihilationists, Isaac Newton, William Whitson etc
Leibniz (who wrote ‘the damnation of children is not to my taste)
The Cambridge Platonists (John Smith, Henry More and George Rust who wrote ‘The Apology for Origen etc)
The Latitudinarians – Benjamin Whitecote, Archbishop Tilotson etc
White and Sterry the Cambridge PLatonists who were also Calvinists and chaplains to Oliver Cromwell.
(And he notes the role played the abrogation of the 42nd article requiring belief in Hell by the Elizabethan Church as a factor also)
Boehme’s writings had currency in the seventieth century and did influence a lot of people in a very diffusive way. But of the linage that Walker traces, the Cambridge Platonists knew of Boehme and regarded him as a man of piety (which he evidently was – he wrote a beautiful short book ‘The Way of Christ’ which seems to show a deep personal devotion to Jesus) but they did not believe in the divine inspiration of his visionary reveries and objected to the key elements in his thinking about the Divine nature.
Sterry possessed some books by Boehme and seems to have been influenced by them slightly – but Jeremiah White was not influenced by Boehme. Isaac Newton read Boehme when he was young mainly because of his interest in alchemy - but it did not influence his annihilationist views.
Walker sees ‘the decline of hell’ as part of a revolution in ideas and sentiments. Cruelty began to be seen as a vice – it didn’t necessarily make people les cruel but cruelty came to be seen largely as viscous. So things that in the sixteenth century seemed to many very normal – revolting displays of cruelty in public executions, barbaric punishment of children (and a belief in the damnation of unbaptised children), religious persecutions as a necessary step to prevent the spread of damnable doctrines – all came to be considered as neither good nor effective (this revolution in sentiment began in these times but it was not completed in these times). Walker gives shed loads of evidence to back up his thesis and it is still largely accepted as a hugely important contribution by scholars.
I commented earlier on Boehme’s beliefs and his obscure style etc. One thing is worth stressing and mightily so -
BOEHME WAS NOT A UNIVERSALIST – SOME OF HIS FOLLOWERS BECAME UNIVERSALISTS A HUNDRED YEARS AFTER HIS VISIONS, BUT HE WAS NOT A UNIVERSALIST. HE BELIEVED THAT SOME EVEN MANY WOULD CHOOSE THEIR OWN DAMNATION.
Enough for now.
Dr McClymond claims to have traced the influence of Boehmenist universalism across five countries -England, Germany France, America and Russia (he doesn’t; look at the American connections although I have suggested some connections in an earlier post). It enables him to implicate the beginnings of modern universalism with subjective visionary states, spiritualism, occult societies, astrology and alchemy – and perhaps even with fomenting revolution.
It is not true that the Boehmenists spearheaded universalism for one. But apart from this he makes a lot of factual errors (unfair even to the Boehmenists).
With the English connection he calls John Pordage a Universalist – he was not. He calls him a spiritualists - well Pordage had visions of angels but he was not technically a spiritualist in the nineteenth century sense because he did not attempt to contact the dead.
Jane Lead – Pordage’s former disciple- was the founder of the Philadelphians and was convinced of universal salvation through a vision – but not through her reading of Boehme. But Walker thinks that her reading of either George Rusts Apology for Origen or the writings of Lady Anne Conway were the spur for her visions and makes a good case for this.
Dr McClymond says that to his knowledge the Philadelphians were the first society ever founded to promote Universalism. Well the Diggers in the English Revolution had also believed in Universal salvation but I take his point. The Philadelphians were a small group of eccentrics and their purpose in promoting Universalism was that they believed that the everlasting Gospel of universal love was about to be revealed from heaven, that the warring Churches would be reunited in love and amity, and the Christ of love would come to rule. They were a rather benign version of the millenarian sects that arose in more violent and vengeful forms in the history of early modern Europe pretty frequently. Walker sees the fruitcakes as a sort of popular outpourings of sentiments that were already held by many in private.
Dr McClymond says that Gitchel the German Boehmenists was a Universalist. This is not true; he was implacably opposed to Jane Lead’s activities and to her universalism. He mentions the Petersens as Boehmenists – they were not Bohemenists. He claims that they were convinced of universalism by a German prophetess. This is not so - they were convinced by Jane Lead’s vision only after they have tested these against scripture - there was no other prophetess.
He claims that Hegel and Schelling were Bohemenist Universalists. Hegel liked some of Boehme’s ideas in a poetic way - he was inspired by the concept that all of life is somehow Trinitarian in structure – but he thought Boheme was a complete muddle. Schelling was inspired by Boehme but he seems to have developed Boehme’s thinking in the direction of pure pantheism with nothing noticeably Christian about his vision.
McClymond’s thoughts about the French connection are very unhelpful too. He describes the rituals of the Martinists -a hermetic Masonic order who were not Boehmenists and summoned angels for magical operations. One member of this order became a Boehmenist but it was a this point – importantly -that he gave up his magical practices. He later became a Universalist after reading William Law who I will consider in my next post.
I might as well get this out of the way –
Going forward to the later eighteenth century Dr McClymond focuses on Anglican mystic William Law – highlighting his conflict with Wesley. Law was deeply inspired by Boehme but does not fit the conspiracy theory in any way.
Law was not part of any wider Boehmenist circles and was not inspired by the Philadelphians.
He did not own any of the writings of Jane Lead and does not mention her in his letters.
He was in later life deeply inspired by reading Boehme and referred to him extravagantly as his Master (in terms of his spiritual guide in the path of Christ)
However, Law was never slavish in his adherence to Boehme he was well versed in the greater Christian mystical tradition and tended to read Bohme in the light of this and perhaps even unconsciously correct some of the wilder flights of Boehme’s speculations in his writings – the stuff on the ungrund or abyss of freedom that underpins the Godhead and human freedom, Sophia, and alchemical symbolism for example. Law’s communication of Boehme’s ideas is largely within the scope of Christian Orthodoxy.
William Law was not a visionary in any way – and he distrusted extreme mental states.
When he first read Boehme it did not make him a Universalist. His universalism was arrived at by another route – Law also read Gregory of Nyssa and may well have read Mother Julian too.
The central idea in Law’s interpretation of Boehme is that God is not actively wrathful towards us. Wrath and enmity and rivalry are the things that God hands us over to but always longs to rescue us from. God’s punishment is never vindictive - it is about God allowing us to suffer for however long it take while we are shut up in our sins –but this suffering is ultimately remedial and restorative. Our vocation is to cooperate in the transformation of the wrath in ourselves into love through the grace of God and the imitation of and participation in Christ.
Law was one inspiration among many on F.D Maurice and George MacDonald (McClymond notes probably correctly that Law inspired MacDonald’s abhorrence for PSA). George MacDonald read some of Bohme’s writings as a result of his kinship with Law. Steve knows something about this and I hope he posts it
To finish on a broader note on topics that have been well researched and for which I can supply bibliographies - as I said in an earlier post Boehme can be seen as part of a pietistic attempt to restore inwardness to religion as a reaction against the legalistic scholasticism of Protestant Orthodoxy.
Some of the Protestant link to alchemical speculations can be traced back to Luther who praised the alchemists for giving a sign of how God would burn off the dross and leave the quintessence at the Last Judgement.
Calvin had no time for alchemy or spiritual astrology. However, Calvin and the early Calvinists were also prone to what we would term superstition in persecuting witches when harvest failed etc and in reading Gods’ providence into history in peculiar ways (for example Jonathan Edwards following earlier Puritans was convinced the Native Americans were the ten lost tribes of Israel). Also Calvinism in its sixteenth and seventeenth century form which seemed at first to give assurance but then often lead to a life of agonising doubt auto election which was encouraged by Puritan preachers often lead people to pathological states of mind and visions of damnation and complete mental break down. The pietist hermetic tradition had things going for it in these circumstances.
Thanks, Dick!
This is just fantastic scholarly exposition from you and Jason (as well as Arlenite.) We are truly blessed to have you here… http://www.wargamer.com/forums/smiley/229031_thewave.gif
Yes, I did dig up a little about George MacDonald and Boehme (whose influence on GMac was through Law and others primarily, it appears.) I think it’s worth expounding on this a bit given the influence of MacDonald on so many modern Universalists. I came across this article:snc.edu/northwind/documents/By_volume/sk023_Volume_8_(1989)/sk003_MacDonald_and_Jacob_Boehme_-_Dale_J._Nelson.pdf… nice summary and not too long. A couple interesting point by the author, Dale J. Nelson. First, Boehme’s influence on MacDonald was primarily through others. Law of course,(and also the Cambridge Platonists, especially Henry More) but also:
There are few direct references to Boehme in MacDonald’s work…Nelson finds only three, but the “unacknowledged points of comparison” he lists are very interesting, and worth a discussion of their own at some point. I won’t list them to keep from derailing the thread but they are thought provoking.
The author does emphasize that Boehme was NOT a universalist and concludes with this:
I thought it was particularly funny because of the rest of the quote having to do with “ends and beginnings”
Just a note: Actually, Isaac Newton often gets erroneously lumped in with the Arians. His ‘heresy’ on the Trinity actually had to do more with the formulation itself than the identity of persons. He was not a true Arian, however.
Hi Steve
You are too kind - but all three of us can sun ourselves in the glow of appreciation
That’s really good stuff about GMac – and it would be really interesting to know more about Gmac and Boehme. There is a poetical idea that has persisted about the natural world been shot through with the signs of the divine will and purpose. Obviously this is a feature of Boehme that would have appealed imaginatively to GMac (and to the Inklings) as part of a Romantic protest against reductionist science and deistical rationalism. It is a feature of his thinking that is part of a wider tradition of sacramentalsim held also by orthodox Christian thinkers, poets, artists and mystics.
Regarding C.S. Lewis and Boehme I note
Hi Melchi
(Glad you liked the slip of the pen )
I’m sure you’re right - I know little about Newton. Walker uses the term ‘English Arians’ in ‘THE Decline of Hell’ and places Newton in the category (He does this so as to make a distinction between them and the less Biblicist Socinians; but perhaps the term English Eusebians’ would have been more accurate and more to their liking). The important things in terms of the ‘Decline’ is that Walker identifies them a group who have scruples about the doctrine of the Trinity as presented by the Church (because they of their belief in biblical authority trumping tradition). The most important thing for the purpose his study is that these people were also annihilationists – so perhaps that’s why he’s a bit loose with his labelling at this point
I will say that ‘The Decline of Hell’ is certainly not a polemical book written in defence of universalism or nay religious position Christian or non-Christian. Walker is a historian and remains pretty much neutral throughout. The book is not about the history of universalism as such – it’s about the early modern history of the questioning of hells eternal torments. Walker is not above questioning at all. When he does make judgements, some of them are made from a severely rationalist point of view– for example I think his criticism of Orgien’s pastoral notion of ‘double truth’ or ‘reserve’ as an act of elitist snobbery is wide of the mark .
However, when it comes to historical facts established from primary sources he’s very good indeed; very reliable.
Please do ask more questions – I’ve only given a very rough and clumsy sketch above. Walker is reliable but I may not have done him or Stephen Hobhouse - who I have referred to concerning Law - any justice in my hasty notes.
Super-nifty continuations above there! – many thanks to Dick and Steve for their ongoing research!
I have to say that my scepticism about Dr. McCly’s approach only worsens when he hints that he’s going to connect Boehme to the Inklings as some kind of major influence, since (1) none of the Inklings so far as I know were Christian universalists (but then as noted neither was Boehme); and (2) the most influential ones (aside from perhaps Charles Williams) were not even of the same mindset or mystical temper as Boehme.
My guess ahead of his book is that he’s simply going to trace Boehme to them by their respect for Law and MacDonald among some other routes. But why even bother? Lewis in particular rejected the universalism of the man he regarded as his spiritual Teacher, MacDonald, and so strongly that he went out of his way to write a book (The Great Divorce) not only as a direct response to Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell but in order to present MacDonald as, in heaven, a reformed annihilationist! – leaving readers along the way the impression that people had mistaken MacD for a universalist who hadn’t taught that after all.
It’s true that I first became a universalist by following out implications provided by Lewis, but by no means were those spiritualistic or mystical implications. On the contrary, I was trying to work out an expansion to Miracles: A Preliminary Study to see if I could carry it into trinitarian theism (instead of mere supernaturalistic theism, which is as far as Lewis went in his metaphysical argument) – as well as to put his arguments to a more rigorous stress test for my own self-critical purposes – along the lines of hints Lewis seemed to make in his writing about how he himself might continue the argument one day. In that task, the primary influence wasn’t Boehme or Law or MacDonald, but rather Athanasius! – a saint (and Catholic bishop, cough ) whom no Calvinist would disrespect as unorthodox, but who himself was clearly an avid admirer of several prominent universalists of his day, including Origen and Didymus the Blind (the latter whom Athanasius appointed to head the Alexandrian catechetical university and supported during his long tenure there).
So in my case the proper track of influence would be Origen’s proto-trinitarian work (which was deeply connected to his universalism), to Athanasius (to also probably the early Augustine, and probably also to Gregory Nyssa), to Lewis. I didn’t even read MacDonald until I became a Christian universalist myself, and then only because I recalled that Lewis had said (in TGD) that people had thought MacD a universalist, and I was curious how much of his work might have affected the points in Lewis I was putting together. I found that while MacD had influenced him directly in several unexpected ways, MacD’s own grounds for universalism (such as they were) had apparently no special connections in Lewis. (Which rather disappointed me, though I quickly came to appreciate MacD on other grounds. But not for his mysticism per se.)
If I could be allowed one more dig here Jason – I do think Dr McClymond is using guilt by association tactics . And this continues in the rest of lecture
He refers to Hans urs von Balthazar endorsement of Adrienne von Speyr a Catholic visionary- to whom he acted as spiritual director and amanuensis and who had visions of Christ’s decent into hell - by implication as being of the same ilk as the visions of John Pordage (impartial and even sympathetic accounts of Pordage I have read suggest that he was in many way s a man of blameless life but clearly very highly strung, possibly prone to psychotic episodes, and not a universalist, and not even a regular Boehmenists). I’m not sure what to make of von Balthazar’s connection with the female visionary but it was clearly of a different order and visions are accepted within Catholicism if they do not undermine the repository of faith. Jason you may have some thought son this one and here’s an article about it for anyone who is interested–
podles.org/The-Feminine-and- … vation.htm
Dr McClymond referring to Robin Parry having originally published under a pseudonym a short time after an evocation of lurid Masonic theurgic rites leaves a nasty taste.
The implication that Soloviev and Bulgakov were also Boehmenists is very shaky. They were inspired by Bohme’s musing about Sophia but he had no influence on their universalism (and Soloviev firstsvisions were at a very young age long before he read any Boehme – and moreover he does not promote universalism; it is simply implicit in his writings). Likewise Berdyaev found Boheme suggestive as a thinker in terms of his speculations about Sophia and his concept of freedom as the underpinning reality of the cosmos (which he saw as an antidote to totalitarian thinking), but he was not a Boehmenist.
Later on DR McClymond suggest that Father Hilarion’s universalist ideas about the harrowing of hell are based purely on the Gospel of Nicodemus . This is not so – Hilarion merely suggest that the Gospel of Nicodemus is another piece of evidence of a wider tradition borne out in the Church Fathers and Eastern liturgists that ultimately has a biblical source.
Finally it does seem ironic that Dr McClymond should flash up a still from Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of Christ’ as a reminder of what universalists - in his opinion -are downplaying/rejecting. This film uses the account of two (rather unpleasant) Catholic visionaries as a source of its reconstruction of the Passion