“Maybe those would be true if some Christianity less than trinitarianism is true, but in that case we’re all pretty much screwed because ultimate reality won’t be love and justice.”
Well I don’t understand that at all, BUT this is not a thread about ‘trinitarianism’ , and I appreciate your other comments, especially this part:
Strictly speaking, this is a thread about a trinitarian (Dr. Mike) trying to argue, in appeal to other trinitarians, that universalism cannot be trinitarian but must be secretly (and even very radically) non-trinitarian, and basing his argument largely on attempts at defaming or disassociating many early key trinitarian (and proto-trinitarian) leaders from universalism, as well as defaming notable and even key recent trinitarian leaders who happened to be universalists.
So yes, this is a trinitarian thread: it’s an in-house dispute.
But where applicable I’m willing to point out where Dr. McClymond’s arguments wouldn’t even fairly address dogmatic unitarian universalist beliefs (i.e. those who take their various versions of unitarian Christianity doctrinally seriously). 
I hope a patristic scholar or two or three weighs in, because I don’t want to just go around quoting Dr. Ramelli’s tome from earlier this year; but Dr. M’s three-part description of the ‘evolution’ of patristic universalism is highly misleading. What Dr. R demonstrates in depth is how thoroughly the patristic universalists derived their beliefs in universal salvation from their trinitarian theology (or if one wants to call it before Nicea their proto-trinitarian theology); and how consistently they use the same arguments from generation to generation within that framework – arguments based on various key scriptural interpretations and on their high Christology (and high Pneumatology where applicable but in the context of their promotion of orthodoxy during those centuries Christological challenges were far more prevalent so that’s what they tended to talk about more. That was true of non-universalist Fathers, too; the relative focus on understanding the nature and person of Christ doesn’t mean either side was practically only bi-nitarian.)
No, I said ‘trinitarianism’, not ‘trinitarian’. I’ll just butt out graciously here and let you guys go at it 
(wait - “less than trinitarianism” quotha???) 
[tag]Dr Mike[/tag]
I shall just squee like a fanboy (though also a critical one) for a moment, and then add that much (if not all?) of her article about Gnostic apokatastasis is reproduced in the Tome.
Also when she puts ‘father’ in quotes, I seem to remember this being because there is now some doubt whether Origen’s family-father was a Christian martyr or whether this was referring to the man who led him to Christ (since there is a significant theory along the lines that Origen was born to a pagan family).
Dr. Mike, over in the main thread, sort-of replies about Dr. R or her topics anyway (in the second 2/3 of a post first replying to Dr. Talbott):
As a side note, I’m not sure I would want to be the person who tries to claim Balthasar (of all people) practically ignored the Holy Spirit and might as well have been bi-nitarian, and then claims Dr. Ramelli is not a careful scholar…
So, I can see that I’ve badly failed the board in not working harder and more consistently at providing a comprehensive summary of Dr. Ramelli’s Tome, and God knows I can’t make that up now. 
Her work isn’t something I can just assume anyone can get ahold of, to go read how she does things and how much detail she goes into, for purposes of comparison to other arguments or even for comparing to critiques of her.
But I shall try to relevantly summarize around 20 small-font pages of materials (and footnotes) where she talks about Maximus anyway. (I feel pretty sure I recall her mentioning Maximus numerous times elsewhere than her late section on him, in comparison and sometimes contrast to earlier Fathers, but going through the previous 700ish pages would tax even my patience and capabilities. Her index only lists this section of pages topically; and while her index is very partial and kind of thrown together at the last minute – a monstrous undertaking for a book of this sort in any event and I’m glad to have what’s there – I’m going to assume any other prior reference dittos things in this section.)
In topical order starting at p.738 of The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena:
• Maximus, born 580, died 662, lived well after the “so-called condemnation” of Origen (meaning the Justinian anathemas and the Ecumenical Council). Even a supporter of Origen and/or of Christian universalism would have to be very cautious about how to proceed in this environment.
• His early Syriac biography reports he received his spiritual education in a monastery of “Origenists” in Palestine; something that still existed even in those late days. (Dr. R is not entirely clear about whether the biography itself uses that term, but she puts it in quotes as though it does. She cites two modern scholars who acknowledge this point.) He might even have known Cassian the Sabaite.
• His Ambigua to Thomas 7 is generally regarded as Maximus’ refutation of Origenistic cosmology (citing for example Blowers, Tollefsen, and Kattan). But Maximus neither mentions Origen nor refutes his real ideas (per the conclusion of Dr. R’s very extensive prior arguments from primary sources, about his “real ideas” of course).
• On the contrary, in the same chapter 7,20192Cff, Maximus positively relates 1 Cor 15:28 to the final restoration just like Origen did: “God will truly come to be ‘all in all’, embracing all and giving substance to all in himself, in that no being will have any more a movement independent of God, and no being will be deprived of God’s presence. Thanks to this presence, we shall be, and shall be called, gods and children, body and limbs, because we shall be restored to the perfection of God’s project.”
• According to Maximus, just as to Origen, Gregory Nyssen, and Methodius, the fall of man (and other rational beings) marred God’s project, and this is why God providentially provided death for humans, (presumably still quoting from Ambigua 7) “administering our salvation, that we, loving non-being [sic evil], subsequently instructed by suffering, might learn to orient our intellect toward the being”, i.e. toward God Who is self-existence and the ground of all being.
• Maximus thinks {anakephalaiôsis}, the re-heading of all creatures under Christ as their leader not merely as their source of existence (which Christ already always was and is, but not all creatures accept Him as their king yet), will occur in 1097AD(!), thanks to “the mystery of the holy coming of God in the human being, made necessary by the transgression”.
• In Ambigua 42, Maximus rejects the theory of the pre-existence of disembodied souls and their embodiment as a punishment due to a precedent sin; and in line 1333A attacks the doctrine that in the end bodies will completely disappear. But he never attributes these beliefs to Origen, and Origen demonstrably believed the ‘logika’ (Adam, Eve, various angels including those that rebelled) did have bodies from their creation, prior to their fall, which will be recovered incorruptible in the end. Origen clearly and decisively claimed that only the Trinity, not creatures, can subsist without matter: his {theôsis} did not involve ontological deification, so the creatures do not become substantially God, much less do any substantial differences between God and creatures disappear.
• In the Ambigua (apparently also 42,1069A with callbacks at 1328A), Maximus similarly criticizes the Henad theory of disembodied rational creatures who fall and so receive bodies for punishment. Dr. Ramelli acknowledges this doctrine was around at the time of Justinian (also still in Maximus’ day evidently), but attributes it to a “radicalized Evagrianism” not to Origen who actually attacked Gnostics in his day for holding it.
• Among all of Maximus’s criticisms of theories attributed to Origen, the most remarkable absence is any refutation of the doctrine of apokatastasis itself. This lack, in combination of his explicit critique of positions condemned (before and in his day) as Origenistic (though he does not mention Origen in connection to those positions), suggests in itself he saw nothing wrong with universal salvation of all sinners from sin into loyalty to (the trinitarian Christian) God.
• Maximus does (still without mentioning Origen) affirm doctrines demonstrably held by Origen other than Christian universalism, including in the same Ambigua, 45,353A where his notion of the fine spiritual bodies of pre-fall rational creatures lines up precisely with Nyssa and Origen. This will also be the risen body in the end, so in that sense (among several others) the end will be like the beginning, and not only like but superior to the beginning – just the same as Origen affirmed. The superiority will lie in the acquisition of the likeness (but not the substantial identity) of God and the free and voluntary choice of the Good, thus passing from mere “image” to “likeness” (per 45,1092B).
• Like Origen, Maximus in 45,1076Aff highlights that the eventual submission to God must be voluntary and that free will shall be kept by rational creatures until the final {theôsis}.
• In Ambigua 42,128C, Maximus is very close to Origen’s notion of the pre-existence of the Ideas of all things in God’s Logos-Wisdom, when Maximus maintains that the logoi of all things pre-existed in God the divine Logos. Dr. R says this corresponds back to Clement of Alexandria, too; but in Ambigua 7,1085A Maximus himself explicitly attributes this concept to Clement’s teacher and predecessor as president of the Alexandrian catechetical school, Pantaenus – a man whose work (at least) was also well-known to Origen.
• Maximus shares Alexandrian scriptural interpretation techniques similar to that of Origen; his language about this in Ambigua 10 echoes Origen saying the Law must be interpreted spiritually and not in a corporeal or material sense (though neither for Origen denying its historicity).
• Maximus, like Origen, insists (for example in Q. ad. Thal.) on a subtle point of correspondence between {archê} and {telos} such that from considering the end result one can know the beginning.
• Dr. Ramelli acknowledges that whether Maximus himself accepted universal salvation is still hotly debated among scholars, though she observes that the spread of dispute on this goes so far as to sometimes claim Maximus was actually misinterpreting Origen to create a non-personal divinization in contrast to Origen’s humanism! This is definitely not Dr. R’s argument of course, as noted above.
• Dr. R cites Michaud, Grumel, Balthasar (especially) and Sherwood, apparently also Tollefsen (with whom Dr. R discussed the matter personally in 2012) in favor of Maximus being a Christian universalist though without professing it overtly. Michaud thinks Maximus unhesitatingly embraced it, and only appeared to be reluctant to admit it in passages where his intention is paraenetic and moral not theological. (Dr. R compares this to Basil’s Asceticum magnum.) Maximus never states hell will be absolutely eternal.
• Grumel argues that Maximus took over Nyssen’s apokatastasis but with the prudence demanded by the socio-political situation of Maximus’ day.
• Balthasar (in Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, also later in Was dürfen wir hoffen?) argues that Maximus was obliquely referring to universal salvation in his comments about the trees of life and of good and evil, during the prologue and part 43 of Q. ad. Thal (Questions to Thallus). He thinks he sees the same thing in the same text regarding Christ’s victory over evil on the cross; but that Maximus retains a prudent silence on the explicit conclusions, both because after Justinian this seemed more difficult, and for pastoral reasons already present in Origen (i.e. the doctrine of reserve – people would misunderstand it to mean anyone can sin as much as they want.) Dr. Ramelli adduces some other places she thinks Maximus is honoring universal salvation by an explicit appeal to holy silence on various topics, connecting this with the apophatic (negative theology) approach of Pseudo-Dionysius and Eriugena (and with the medieval mystic Marguerite Porete, upon whom she disgresses for a while).
• Going back to the “few texts in which Maximus expresses his view of the eventual apokatastasis”, Dr. R cites Q. et. dub. (Quaestiones et dubia, i.e. Questions and Dubious Points, from Declerks’s critical edition). Maximus is commenting on Nyssa’s apokatastasis, and distancing himself from the Isochristi or Bar Sudhaili (both of which coincide into pantheism). As such, Maximus says the Church advocates three kinds of legitimate apokatastasis: the restoration of the individual to his original condition thanks to virtue; the restoration of humanity to incorruptibility and immorality in the resurrection; and the restoration attested by Gregory Nyssus (appealed to by Maximus), of the faculties of the soul to the state before they were ruined by sin.
• On this third type of apokatastasis, recognized by Maximus as a legitimate teaching of the Church, explicitly exemplified by appeal to Nyssus (no doubt as the champion of trinitarian orthodoxy as at Chalcedon), Maximus says this spiritual restoration will be just as universal as the bodily resurrection and will take place at the end of all eons. “For, just as the whole of human nature in the resurrection must have back the incorruptibility of the flesh in the time we hope for, so also the subverted faculties of the soul, during a long succession of eons, will have to lose all memories of {kakia} [evilness] found in it. Then the soul, after crossing all eons without finding rest, will arrive at God, who has no limit, and thus, by virtue of knowledge of – if not yet participation in – the goods, will recover its faculties and be restored to its original state. And the Creator will be manifested to it, the Creator who is not responsible for sin.” In other words (as Dr. R puts it), souls that have their faculties, once subverted by sin, restored to their original condition that existed before the contamination with evil, and are purified from evil in such a way as to have not even memories of evil left, will not fail to adhere to the Good, Who is God, in the end. On this, Maximus not only lines up with Clement, Origen, and other Fathers subsequent to them, but like them cites Plato’s formula {theos anaitios} although with an explicitly trinitarian Christian theology.
• While Maximus allows that this does not necessarily yet involve participation in the good, his argument implies this participation must come in the end, and he nowhere denies eventual participation in the good.
• Along the way Maximus connects this resurrection of the spirit from any continuing evil into good (post-mortem) with the general resurrection and with the general restoration of the natural universe from its corruption by rational souls who chose to do injustice.
• In his reflections on Psalm 59 (also Mystagogy 7), Maximus reflects on how the transformation of human free will shall take place “thanks to the general transformation and renovation that will occur in the future, at the end of the eons, due to God our Savior: a universal renovation of the whole human nature, natural, and yet by grace.”
• Maximus insists a lot on the activity of the Spirit aiming at “salvation, the greatest telos”, meaning salvation from sin. No lesser telos would be appropriate for God’s intention, and Maximus compares the final telos with the archê though superior to the archê – the superiority being that although humanity was originally created perfect and without passion or sin yet humanity (and the angels) fell, but this won’t happen again once the telos has been achieved. As with Origen, in Ambiguity 71,1412D: “the first and the last realities are alike; moreover, they really are, whereas …] the intermediate realities pass away.” Also in Amb. ad Thom. 5,1048B, in the archê “sin did not belong to human nature” therefore neither will it in the telos. But in Amb. 48,1361D, Maximus covers with silence the extreme telos beyond this and future eons, which will be the extreme culmination of all goods.
• Along with Origen and Nyssen, Maximus stresses that apokatastasis is a work of God’s grace and that Christ has assumed the whole of humanity through a process of {oikeiôsis}.
• Maximus does criticize, in Amb. 42,1329B, any automatic salvation, in favor of free will. Late Origenism had indeed professed automatism, but Origen had greatly stressed the importance of free will in salvation, even in universal salvation, especially in his anti-Gnostic polemic. Maximus, exactly like Origen, observes that humans determine their own closeness to or remoteness from God (though not so as to prevent God coming to the unjust for salvation from sin). But neither at Amb. 42,1329B or elsewhere does Maximus say that this exclusion will be eternal: those who by their choices cannot participate in the Good suffer while those who can rejoice, but the suffering is by no means presented as an eternally immutable condition – a concept that would be just as alien to Maximus’ notion of good and evil as to Origen’s.
• Nor in Questions to Thallus does Maximus say that the suffering (odunê) of those unworthy of union with God will be eternal. Rather, as in Amb 46,1357B, those unworthy can become worthy of such inclusion by cooperating with the authoritative purification from God. Origen and Eusebius of Caesarea agreed with this: Eusebius taught (from 1 Cor 15) that Christ’s eschatological reign is aimed precisely at making those worthy who are still unworthy.
• In his critique of automatic salvation (which resembles Origen’s critique of Valentinian automatism), Maximus says in Myst.24 that God will be all in all for those who will be saved, and (in Amb.63,1392D) for those who have freely used their logos. Salvation which is offered by God to all, is chosen by the saints (PG 91,25B) who are sanctified by the Spirit; the Spirit (Q. ad Thal 6,280D) does not sanctify a free will that refuses it. God loves all the same way, but glorifies the virtuous, and “the mystery of salvation belongs to those who want it, not to those who are forced to submit to it” (Q.1309C4-11; In Or. Dom. CCG 23,154ss.)
• But these critiques of late Origenism (as Dr. R acknowledges existed) line up perfectly with Origen himself teaching that the final submission of all rational creatures to Christ and to God will be absolutely voluntary and not forced in the least despite God’s punitive action on impenitent sinners until then. The purification of the intellect and of free will, which Maximus himself insists will be regenerated in all humanity, will once completed entail a voluntary adhesion to the Good Who is God.
• In Car. 1,71, Maximus states that God, at the end of all eons, will be united to all humans, both those who are worthy of this and those who are unworthy. Since Maximus states God’s plan at the beginning and until the end remains the theosis of all rational creatures, however, this cannot mean God unites to those simply unworthy of union, but that God must bring them to worthiness despite being unworthy (for not yet being faithfully Christian) post-mortem. Maximus nowhere sees any partial theosis, but everywhere stresses the final telos involves full theosis (even though he will usually pull up short of spelling this out, invoking holy apophatic silence when coming to the point – a prudent move in his socio-political situation.)
• From Amb. ad Io. 2,36, the work of Christ is “to join together the natural ruptures in all of universal nature, and to bring to perfection all the logoi of individual beings, by which the unification of the divided is fulfilled. He reveals and performs God his Father’s megalê boulê [Great Will], recapitulating all beings in himself, in heaven and on earth [citing Eph 1:10].”
• Maximus, when using his own words, never describes the last judgment and otherworldly punishment as aidios (except once when quoting from Jude in Q ad Thal 11) but rather as eonian, which in Maximus as in Nyssus and in Origen refers to the ages before the final telos (or referring back in time to remote or ancient). He can however also use it to refer to that which endures, such as God and life in God. Dr. R borrows an article by Moreschini, who cites eonian as evidence against univesal salvation, for the list.
• Thus although all beings remain in God’s logoi, those who give up their own logos to follow evil things shall undergo eonian justice {dikê}. (Q. et Dub. 173)
• In Carit.1,55-57, those who posit themselves out of the agapê are liable to eonian crisis, and those who hate other human beings or even speak against human beings, deserve eonian kolasis. Passions and ignorance are worthy of eonian kolasis in 2,34.
• In Lib. Ascet. 27, the fire of those in the place of eonian topos shall not be quenched and their worm shall not die.
• On such sayings, including the Isaiah reference to unquenchable fire as punishment, Origen himself and other Christian universalists prior to Maximus explicitly agreed – but they were not using “eonian” to mean never-ending in relation to those terms.
• On the contrary, Maximus repeatedly refers to God’s life shared with creatures as aidios not aioniôs, which strongly indicates Maximus accepted the typical distinction between the terms held by previous Christian universalists back to and including Origen. Moreover, Maximus connects this aidios life with the apokatastasis of the elimination of sin.
• For one striking example from Q. ad Thal. 61, God will “give to the human nature, through pathos, apatheia, through tribulations, relief, and through death, tên aidion zôên [the aidionian life], and will thus have it restored (pasin apokatestêsen).”
• In Or. Dom. l. 82, “participation in aidiou zôês, apokatastasin of the human nature, which will return to harmony with itself in apatheia, destruction of the law of sin {nomou tês hamartias katalusin}.”
• In Amb. 65, Maximus agrees with Nazianzen’s discourse of the eighth day, which is described as the first, the last, and indestructable, on which the souls will even case to celebrate the Sabbath (7th day of rest). Relatedly Nazianzen’s friend Nyssus, in commenting In. Inscr. Ps. 83-84, described the eight day as the final day when Christ will rise as Sol Iustitiae and will never set; also In Sext. Ps. 188-189, Gregory identifies the seven days with chronos, time, and the movement of the world, and the eighth day with the eternal new creation.
• Maximus agrees and expounds on the concept: the seven days indicate time and the sequence of eons, at the end of which will come the cessation of all eons and the access to {to aei einai} (the always-being) by grace, peace and quiet without beginning or end, after the movements (per Origen’s concept of spiritual “movement” being a choice between good and evil) of limited beings. This end will be the 8th day, God’s Parousia, an aidios day superior to aiônios.
• Maximus does say (in Amb 65) that this eighth day determines {to eu aei einai} “the good always-being” with participation in it, or else {to kakôs aei einai} “the bad always-being” to those who have used the logos of being against nature.
• But he makes so clear elsewhere (such as Amb 42,1332A) that evil cannot have ontological subsistence (along with Nyssus and Origen), that (as in Amb 20,1237C) “the children of perdition”, “hell”, etc. are identified as “those who, in their mental disposition, have put non-being as their own basis, and in their ways have become similar to non-being in all respects.” (Evil is also non-being at Amb 7,1085A.) The ultimate result of this would be annihilation, not never-ending existence of evil in the telos; yet God by gracious Providence prevents every creature from ending up as non-being. (Dr. R does not cite this however.)
• In Q. et dub. 10, Maximus understands the eschatological of the Sabbath Day as the giving up of all evil and its complete vanishing. This necessarily excludes evil continuing forever, including in creatures.
• In Dub 65, Maximus states that even {to aie einai}, which as noted includes the bad always-being, will pass away on the 8th day with the eschatological 7th day, into aidios life in which, for Maximus, there can be no shadow of evil, and about which he professes holy silence.
• In Amb 65, Maximus offers two more alternative interpretations to the 8th Day mystery of Nazianzus (and Nyssus). While the 7th day goes beyond the moods conforming to virtue and the arguments conforming to contemplation, the 8th day is the complete transformation, by God’s grace, of all that which has been done or contemplated. Or else (somewhat redolent of Evagrius) the 7th day is the impassibility that follows active philosophy, and the 8th day is the wisdom that follows contemplation.
• In Amb 59, discussing Christ’s descent into hades, Maximus overtly states that adhesion to God is still possible after death through faith and conversion out of post-mortem punishment.
• Maximus hints at progression after the universal resurrection, too, in Amb 63, but calls the holy silence upon speaking of it. In Amb 50,1368D however, he more explicitly parallels the progression of current eon --> place after death – future eon, with resurrection (evidently of the wicked) --> feasts and purifications after resurrection --> the telos. After the post-resurrection feasts and mysteries (about which he refuses to talk openly) the final telos is a complete peace which is not immobility but a rest in perpetual movement {aeikinêtos stasis}. Compare with Nyssen’s epecstatic movement, infintely going toward and growing in God.
• In Amb 42,1329B, Maximus returns to the categories of “being”, “being well”, and “being always”, the latter of which signifies the permanence of being donated to all creatures by God, according to their pre-existent logoi in the mind of God (the ideals which God intended for them even before He created them). “Being badly” simply could not refer to a never-ending final state of existence in the theology of Maximus, for that would involve such a badness being God’s original idea and goal for the creatures, which Maximus (along with Nyssus and Origen) strongly denies.
• Given the wealth of evidence, Dr. R suspects the statement about {to kakôs aei einai} “the bad always-being” might be interpolation, seeing as how immediately afterward he returns to the ontological non-subsistence of evil, which logically denies final subsistence in evil eternally. Soon afterward in 65,1332D, Maximus affirms that Christ’s return will determine "the transformation of the universe [of the-all] {epi metastoicheiôsei tou pantos} and the salvation {sôtêria} of our souls and bodies}, because Christ (1333A) “leads and invites all to his glory, insofar as possible, with the power of his inhumanation, being the initiator of the salvation of all {tês pantôn sôtêrias} and completely purifies imperfections in all {tas en holois anakathaironta kêlidas}”.
• Purification in Q. et dub 1,10 is said to occur at the last judgment through the very process of judgment for those who have both sins and good deeds, whereas those who are already perfect will not even undergo judgment. (Dr R quotes extensively from the Greek here.) Several lines later Maximus identifies otherworldly (eonian) purification with the fire in 1 Cor 2:13ff, in which some are said to be saved immediately and others through fire, but no one is said not to be saved. (More extensive citation of Maximus in Greek here.)
• Maximus does say in Amb 2, 1252B that those who sin following passions in this life will remain far from the relationship with God and this will be their punishment for many eons; but Nyssus and Origen both taught the same thing, and Maximus expressly agrees with them that the eons come eventually to an end in the telos of apokatastasis.
• In Q ad Thal 65, although Maximus honors the eschatological Sabbath by mystical silence and unknowing, he also describes the Logos (Christ) as propitiation because “by assuming in itslf what is ours, [He] became like us, absolving us from accusations, and with the gift of grace with deify {theopoiôn} our sinful nature … the connective bond of our transformation into immortality {pros athanasian metapoiêseôs}.” This is why Maximus calls Christ skênopêgia; which in Nyssen’s De Anima represents the final resurrection-restoration of both body and soul to their original condition according to God’s plan, and the liberation from sin and evil. This holistic understanding of the general resurrection and its (eventual) effects by the grace of God is also typical of Origen, as is connection with Maximus to the Feast of Tabernacles.
• At line 575 of Q ad Thal, Maximus speaks of the sanctification provided by God to those who are still in need of it through a fire that is purifying, that they too may participate in God. (Extensive Greek citation here.) This would mean when he says final participation will only be bestowed by God on those worthy of it (which cannot mean they earn their salvation either!), Maximus means God will eventually make the unworthy worthy of such participation.
• Other legitimate Origenian beliefs held by Nyssen and thence by Maximus include pathê being secondary growths of the soul, not belonging to human beings by essence; the doctrine of double-creation (and Nyssen’s anthropology generally); the secondary nature of gender distinction and procreation, God’s plan not being that humans should be born through unions of corruption; the “skin tunic” interpretation which comes straight from Origen (via Nyssus).
• Maximus shares with Origen and Nyssus the theme of the restoration of the human being to its primitive integrity, meaning how Adam and Eve were created, and even moreso meaning the original intention God still has for humanity (and for rational souls not of the human species); and credits the incarnation of the Logos (Q ad Thal 21). The eternal project of God for the human being has been temporarily marred by voluntary sin of the creature, but God will still fully realize His original plans in the end. Christ’s virginal birth interrupts the cycle of genesis and phthora and will finally realize God’s plan. This train of thought not only goes back to Origen but to his successor throughout most of the 4th century Didymus the Blind, explicitly arguing against the Manichees of his day. Christocentrism (not to be regarded apart from operation of the Holy Spirit, the omnipresence of which all in all helps all toward virtue) is a feature of Maximus’ cosmology and his eschatolgoy, and follows precisely the outlines and details worked out by Origen and his successors (and his predecessors to some extent).
• In Amb 42, Maximos talks of “God’s educative economy, whose end is the correction of those who are educated, and the perfect restoration to the logos of their birth, that is, apokatastasis.” Christ is then defined by Maximus as “the initiator of the salvation of all” (Amb 42,1333A) who “leads all to his glory”, having taken up humanity, and “purifies the stains of all the universe”. And earlier in Amb 31,1280A, “Christ-God divinely accomplishes in himself the salvation of all… We do not hesitate to believe that, as his prayer to the Father says, we shall be where he is, he who is the first fruits of the human species …] and thus he completes the body of the one who is completed in all and for all, a body that fills all and is filled by all.” For Maximus, the eventual apokatastasis must pass through the re-heading of all rational creatures in Christ, the {anakephaliôsis}.
• Nor shall this intentional goal of God fail, for in Amb 41,1308D Maximus presents Christ as the one who realizes “the great intention of God the Father” according to Isaiah 9:5 – citing Origen’s phrase in the sense of the apokatastasis! Maximus similarly explains why Christ has the power to bring the great intention of God to completion: because the Son “recapitulates in himself all beings, those in heaven and those on earth, because they were also created in him”, thus He “applies providence to all and brings all beings to unity … God’s providence] connects all of them, those in heaven and those on earth.”
• In his Scholia on Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus approvingly calls attention to Pseudo-D’s idea that the souls and all the intellects, even those which are fallen, are “ultra-celestial lights”, and says “all these living substances have been unified …] They are all united to one another, without mixture and confusion. They are images of God and, in proportion to themselves, they participate in God’s ultra-unitary unit {huperênômenês henôseôs}. These lights are clearly unities.”
• It is not merely these or those individual humans whom Christ lifts up and restores by becoming a human being but (in Amb ad Thom 5,1049A) “becoming a human being, [Christ] lifted human nature together with himself, making it into a mystery.” Slightly earlier, 4,1044AD.1045B, Christ “destroyed our worse element, i.e. the law of sin that comes from transgression …] saved the human beings who were imprisoned by sin, and paying in himself the price of our redemption, had them participate even in divine power …] he accomplished the complete salvation of humanity, making his own all that our humanity is …] he became by nature a new Adam, thus replacing the old …] he wanted to render me master of the devil, who, by means of deception, mastered as a tyrant …] through passible flesh he deified the whole of humanity, who had become earth due to corruption …] in view of the perfect submission through which he will bring us to the Father after saving us and making us conformed to himself for the effectiveness of his grace.”
• Interestingly, Maximus does not directly claim to himself speak the quoted statements about the salvation and deification of all rational intelligences (including all humanity), but rather attributes them with approval to “a man, holy in thought and life” – a man hidden behind the same veil of silence Maximus prefers to usually draw when talking on the topic at all. A man presumably not Gregory Nysuss or anyone still honored back to Clement’s teacher Pantaenus, whom Maximus has no qualms about citing expecting his readers to approve them. There is really only one man we know of whose belief lines up perfectly with the statements of Maximus, who would have been anathema to speak of in approval in the days of Maximus, but who would have been so influential for Maximus to appeal to by circumlocution anyway. (Dr. R does not go this far in arguing Maximus is actually referring to Origen, but does call attention to the oddity.)
• In Q ad Thal 60, the aim of God, telos and skopos, from the beginning, even before creation of this world, is identified with the mystery of Christ and individuated in the union of the divinity with humanity that takes place in Christ, leading to the “recapitulation into God of those who were created by God” or {eis ton theon hê tôn hup’autou pepoiêmenôn anakephalaiôsis} where by “recapitulation” Dr. R refers to {anakephalasis} the returning of rebel creatures back under the kingship of God. This kingship (and a return under kingship so far as rebels are concerned) is said by Maximus to be the mystery and the Great Plan of God and the aim of divine Providence (via the Holy Spirit typically). This Great Intention/Council, from Isaiah 9:5, is what Christ (Himself the king) announces, showing “the abyssal depths of the Father’s goodness”. The fruition of this plan can only come when all movements toward evil, and even from evil toward good, have ceased – but not with creatures still impenitently stuck in evil! For the creatures, in God’s Great Plan (again an Origen phrase), must be made worthy of enjoying God. “For it was necessary that the creator of the substance of beings according to nature * be also the author of the deification by grace of the creatures that have come into being, so that the giver of well-being might also appear as the giver, by grace, of always-well-being.”
I realize that topically this summary is very messy. I’ll try to summarize the summary later, maybe this weekend. But it gives a lot to work with in comparing analyses.*
Geez, I had to actually think to get through that - but it was well worth it, thanks for all the hard work Jason.
That’s wonderful summary Jason. Thanks you so much. It all makes perfect sense to me and is compelling. Two points of observation -
The Eighth Day of creation is prefigured in Easter Monday that takes place again in a Garden/restored Eden with welcoming angels rather than angels with swords.
Speaking against someone (rather than speaking about or letting off steam about them) is slander and is a portion of hatred. Real slander is done to take away a persons honour and destroy their reputation.
Good stuff old chum - truly excellent
Thanks, guys. I’m afraid it is terribly scattershot – Dr. R tends to bounce around quite a bit topically, not in absolute leaps but not in much of a progressing development of an argument either. (Well, she’s better at that in other sections.)
I think this hampers readers from working through the various issues involved in a way that encourages keeping various developed points in mind. For readers who, for whatever reason, aren’t… inclined, let us say, to keep various points in mind to begin with? – the results can be kind of predictable.
Still, mad props (as the kidz say nowadays) for her doing it at all!
I’ll try to pro and con it topically later for better clarity.
All I can say is that if McClymond is going to take on Ramelli, he had better spend a good long while reading up on patristics. She is no mean scholar. So far I have not been impressed at all with McClymond’s “knowledge” of the Church Fathers, and the idea that some kind of essential or necessary relationship must exist between nontrinitarianism and the universalist hope is hogwash.
Thank you, Jason, for the summary of St Maximus.
Thought I must tell you this I had a peep at the Amazon reviews of Dr Ramelli’s tome. There were four reviews. Three gave five stars and reasons for their five stars. However, one reviewer gave a single star and said that it is a very poor book - no reasons given apart from ‘see Michael McClymond’s review in the Journal of Theological Studies’.
Wow…just, wow!
So, has Dr. McClymond’s rebuttal book been published yet? He was working on that, right?
I’ve looked at Amazon USA Jason - it isn’t mentioned as due for publication.
I have received the following link from Caleb of Dr McClymond’s review of Illaria Ramelli plus her reply to him. Both were posted by Father Kimel at Eclectic Orthodoxy.
afkimel.wordpress.com/2016/04/0 … coming-in/
Footnote 7 seems important to me. The fall and restoration of souls found in the Nag Hammadi community that Dr Mike refers to and says Dr Ramelli ignores is not universalist (even if there are affinities between Origen and the Gnostics and some respects – which Dr Ramelli has shown is debatable). I’m not a patristic scholar but when I had a conversation with Dr Mike about this contention I’d did read the sources he was citing at this time to back up his argument about universalism coming from Gnosticism and other relevant sources translated in the Nag Hamadi Library reader. None of these taught universalism as far as I could see.
A note on Williams book ‘Re-thinking Gnosticism’ cited as being very important in Dr Mike’s Footnote:
Williams argues broadly that our current view of the Gnostics has been distorted by the polemics of the Church Father’s against Gnosticism and that a careful reading of the texts that we have will show that there was more diversity and more subtlety amongst Gnostic thinkers than has previously been acknowledged. Dr Mike is obviously referring to the following argument by Williams as something that Dr Ramelli has not taken into account (from the publisher’s blurb):
‘’Williams takes up the question of “gnostic determinism”: the oft-repeated modern assertion that the gnostics believed mankind to be strictly divided into different types (the spirituals, the psychics, the materials) or different races (the race of Seth, the race of Cain), and that the doctrinal upshot of such divisions was that each individual’s potential for salvation was understood to be already determined at birth. Williams shows that this modern notion of Gnostic determinism is not supported by the original texts. A careful reading of the sources shows that one is not “born into” the race of Seth: rather it is a status one may attain or earn. The race of Seth is more a spiritual community than a biological “race” in our modern sense. Likewise with the division into three types: one’s status as a spiritual is seen to be linked to one’s behaviour: one may lose this status through abandoning the truth, and thus to be born as a spiritual is no guarantee of salvation. The assertion that the ancient gnostics were elitists in the sense of believing themselves predestined to salvation (saved in essence) is misguided. Williams demonstrates that there was at least as much flexibility in these gnostic notions as there is in more recent Protestant doctrines of the elect’’.
I’ve read the Chapter from ‘Re-Thinking Gnosticism on Gnostic determinism. It has nothing to say about Universalism. The author does make a good that not all Gnostic sects were rigid in their determinism; that salvation through gnosis was seen as conditional upon diligently effort in seeking and finding; and that even the spiritual ‘elect’ could lose salvation through backsliding. However, with my little knowledge I was always aware that the ‘psychics’ – those with a mental and emotional life who were not yet fully spiritual –could either attain or lose salvation. All that this study does is extend this conditionally to the elect spirituals. The author is less convincing about the fate of those who are merely physical/sarkic/hylical. These are the people who are bound to the cycle of toil – the majority of the population and he does not produce evidence to soften any of the contemptuous texts I have seen towards this large class of people that the Gnostics produced (and dismissed to destruction). It would be interesting to know what Dr Ramelli has written about this new study. However, it does not impact directly on her case for universalism.
P.S. The ‘Rethinking Gnosticism’ book actually imagines Gnostics to have a subtle view of determinism more akin to some of the New England Puritans (which is amusing since Dr Mike is a Calvinist). Also I doubt that the other studies cited by Dr Mike concerning cross pollination between Gnostic views and Origen have anything to say about universalism but rather about the middle Platonism that they shared even as opponents (as says Dr Ramelli). ON the whole however I think this is a very technical discussion for specialists in the field. It’s ceritainly beyond little old me - but I simply await the evidence that Christian universalism could have developed from Gnosticism when all the evidence I’ve seen - including the Rethinking Gnosticism chapter - points precisely the opposite way:-/
Thanks for the update, Sobor!
I know Dr. R was working on a companion Tome to more fully examine Gnostic and pagan uses of apokatastasis (as a term) and soteriology in general, which the first tome summarized. I don’t know where that project is, in comparison to her forthcoming work (being edited by Dr. Parry apparently) on Christian universalism in the medieval periods (leading in from what we might otherwise call the Middle Dark Ages where her original book left off).