Apocatastasis

APOCATASTASIS. - A Greek word (ἀποκατάστασις) which etymologically means "to put a thing back in its original place." It is used only once in Sacred Scripture, by St. Peter (Acts 3:21), to signify the restoration of all things (ἀποκατάστασις πάντων) to the order willed by God, an order that has been disturbed by the sin of free creatures. This restoration will take place at the end of time, in the parousia. Jesus expresses this a. with the word palingenesis (Mt 19:21). St. Paul alludes to it when he speaks of the liberation of creation from the slavery of corruption (Rom 8:19-22) and especially of the destruction of the effects of sin and of the last enemy, death, "when God will be all in all" (1 Cor 15:25-28, 54-57). St. Peter (2 Pet 3:13) and St. John (Rev 21:1) make allusions to "new heavens and a new earth" in which justice will dwell. The a. will therefore entail a universal renewal that will embrace the intellectual world and the material world and will establish a firm and definitive order perfectly conformed to the divine plan. Such is the general idea, wrapped in mystery, of the revealed a.

Alongside this orthodox a., a heterodox and heretical one was introduced: the Origenist a. Origen, under the influence of Neoplatonism, conceived the restoration of all things as the complete disappearance, from the moral world, of sin and of all its consequences, including the punishment and damnation of free creatures, whether angels or men. A day will come when all intelligent beings who have gone astray, including Satan and the rebel angels, will return to God's friendship, and God, in the apostle's expression, "will be all in all." In other words, according to Origen there is no eternal hell. To punish sin God inflicts only medicinal penalties, whose duration is proportionate to the guilt, and the fire of hell itself, a metaphorical fire, is merely purifying. This grave error was taught, after Origen, by St. Gregory of Nyssa in its full extent and by the Origenists. In the West certain authors, such as St. Jerome before 394 and the Ambrosiaster, limited the a. to the baptized alone. It is the error of the "merciful," vigorously combated by St. Augustine. At first a simple error, the Origenist a., whether total or partial, became a formal heresy after the Church's condemnation in the 6th century (Constantinopolitan Synod of 543, approved by Pope Vigilius and by all the patriarchs, and the Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553). Many Protestant sects: Anabaptists, Moravian Brethren, Universalists, etc., follow the Origenist thesis. According to the opinion of A. Harnack (Dogmengeschichte, III, 4th ed., Tübingen 1909, p. 661), all the Reformed adhere in their hearts to the a.

This heresy has also penetrated in an attenuated form among modern Byzantine and Greek-Russian theologians. Many of them, resolute opponents of the Catholic purgatory, teach not only the mitigation of the pains of hell but also the liberation of certain of the damned through the prayer of the Church (cf. M. Jugie, Theologia Dogmatica Orientalium dissidentium, IV, Paris 1931, pp. 137-58).

Martino Jugie