APOCATASTASIS. - A Greek word (ἀποκατάστασις) which etymologically means “to restore a thing to its original state.” 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 which was disturbed by the sin of free creatures. This restoration will take place at the end of time at the Parousia. Jesus expresses this apocatastasis by the word palingenesis (Matt 19:21). St. Paul alludes to it when he speaks of the liberation of creation from the bondage 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) allude to “new heavens and a new earth” in which justice will dwell. Apocatastasis will therefore entail a universal renewal embracing both the intellectual and the material world and establishing a firm and definitive order perfectly in accord with the divine plan. Such is the general, though mysterious, idea of apocatastasis as revealed.
Alongside this orthodox apocatastasis, there arose a heterodox and heretical version: the apocatastasis of Origen. Under the influence of Neoplatonism, Origen conceived the restoration of all things as the complete disappearance, from the moral world, of sin and all its consequences, including the punishment and damnation of free creatures, whether angels or men. There will come a day when all erring intelligent beings, including Satan and the rebel angels, will return to the friendship of God, and God, in the words of the Apostle, “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 fault, and even the fire of hell, a metaphorical fire, is only purificatory. 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 Ambrosiaster, limited apocatastasis to the baptized alone. This is the error of the “merciful,” vigorously combated by St. Augustine. Originally a simple error, Origen’s apocatastasis, whether total or partial, became formal heresy after its condemnation by the Church in the 6th century (Council of Constantinople in 543, approved by Pope Vigilius and all the patriarchs, and the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553). Many Protestant writings—Anabaptists, Moravian Brethren, Universalists, etc.—follow Origen’s thesis. According to A. Harnack (Dogmengeschichte, III, 4th ed., Tübingen 1909, p. 661), all the Reformers in their hearts adhere to apocatastasis.
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 damned through the prayers of the Church (cf. M. Jugie, Theologia Dogmatica Orientalium dissidentium, IV, Paris 1931, pp. 137-58).