Annotatio CXXXI

”Joshua burned the city of Hai, and made it an everlasting heap.” — Joshua 8:28

Origen, composing an allegory of the present passage, seemed to assert that after the day of resurrection neither the demons, nor hell — the place of the demons — shall be forever,¹ but that after certain spaces of time the Demons, together with the rest of the damned who are detained in hell, shall come to celestial beatitude. For thus he wrote in homily 8 on Joshua: “There is in this also a mystery of the future resurrection; for even then, thereafter, there shall be no Devil at all, because there shall then be no death. For, speaking of the Devil, the Apostle says: ἔσχατος ἐχθρὸς καταργεῖται ὁ θάνατος, that is, ‘The last enemy, death, is destroyed.’² But let us see what things follow in what comes after. ‘And Jesus,’ he says, ‘burned the city of Hai, and the city was made [one] which shall not be inhabited forever.’ You see that these things which follow pertain more to the truth of the mystery than of the history. For that place of the earth is not uninhabitable forever in the [same] way as the place of the Demons shall be uninhabitable — then, namely, when now no one shall sin, nor shall sin reign in anyone, when the Devil and his Angels shall be delivered to the eternal fire, Christ saying to those who have conquered, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father,’ etc., but to the others, ‘Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the Devil and his Angels’³ — until he provide by remedies for every soul which he himself has harmed, and all Israel be made safe.” Into the same opinion he speaks in the first book περὶ ἀρχῶν [On First Principles], chapter 6, where, treating from the beginning of the wicked spirits who have sinned, he brings forth these things: “These [beings] indeed, [fallen] from the state of the first beatitude, are moved, yet not moved irremediably; [but] to those whom we have described above they are subjected, to be governed by the holy and blessed orders; and, using their assistance, and reformed by salutary institutions and disciplines, they can return and be restored to the state of beatitude.” Again, in Tome 18 on John, expounding that [passage] of John 8, “Whither I go, you cannot come,”⁴ he says: “If anyone shall have spoken blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be remitted to him, neither in this world nor in the [world] to come — [yet] not [absolutely] so; but if in the future age it is not remitted, [it does not follow that] therefore neither in the [still later] future ages shall it be remitted.”

That Origen betrayed this same [error] more openly in the exposition of the first and second chapters of the epistle to the Ephesians, Jerome is a witness, in the commentaries on that same epistle. Theophilus also, bishop of Alexandria, in the 2nd Paschal book; Augustine, in the book On Heresies; and Jerome, in the epistle to Avitus, and in very many other places of this kind, detest this error in Origen. Rufinus, however, in book 1 of the Invectives, had asserted that Jerome, in the commentaries on the epistle to the Ephesians, approved this dogma; to which [view] Erasmus also, in the Origenic Annotations, indicates that Ambrose subscribed, in the exposition of the third chapter of the same epistle. But of this we shall speak below, in Annotation 298 of the sixth book.

Now it is pleasing to append certain testimonies of Origen, diametrically opposed to the higher [preceding] passages — from which Jacobus Merlinus, in the Apology for Origen, contends that the aforesaid opinions were inserted into the Origenic works not by Origen himself, but by rivals of Origen, with a malicious mind — in these words: “The dogma concerning the reparation of the demons and of the damned, into which they think Origen declined, is refuted by many of his [own] sayings. For upon Ezekiel, homily 14, he says: ‘The Angels, not keeping their principality, but deserting their own habitation, [God] will keep in the judgment of the great day, under darkness, in everlasting chains.’ In homily 14 upon Joshua, expounding how many kings were gathered together against Joshua — to whom the Lord says, ‘Fear not before their face, for tomorrow, at this hour, I will deliver them into thy hands’ — [Origen writes]: ‘I see,’ he says, ‘that today we cannot oppress them, nor slay them all, but tomorrow they shall be destroyed’ — that is, after the consummation of this age. For then every contrary power shall be destroyed, and then it shall be utterly conquered, when it shall be said to those who are on the left hand, ‘Go into the eternal fire, which God has prepared for the Devil and his angels.’⁵ The same [Origen] asserts [it] in homily 14 on Numbers, expounding that [passage], ‘They were beseeching the Lord that he would not torment them before the time.’ The same, in the fifth book, in the explanation of the epistle to the Romans, asserts [it], alleging the epistle of Jude. But if he asserts that they are to be punished for eternity, and afflicted with perpetual fire, then he does not assert that they are at length liberated. Moreover, he uses these words in book 5 of the aforesaid explanation, expounding that [passage] of Paul, ‘Death shall no more have dominion over him,’⁶ etc.: ‘Whence I wonder that certain [persons], against this most evident sentence of Paul, will assert that in future ages either the same or similar things must be suffered by Christ [again], so that even those may be liberated whom, in the present life, the medicine of his dispensation could not heal. For they say: Can there be any age in the future, wherein neither anything of good nor of evil is done, but the matter stands amazed, and a profound silence remains?’ Again, expounding that [passage] of Paul, ‘Have they so stumbled that they should fall?’,⁷ he says: ‘Israel shall be saved; but of this [Israel] [of this Israel] which is said to have fallen from heaven; nor, at the end of the age, shall there be any turning back. Concerning the damned he thinks the same, upon Isaiah, where, expounding those words, ‘They shall rise again, they who are in the sepulchres,’ etc., he says: ‘It is therefore better to say that we shall all indeed rise again, so that the impious too may come into that place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and [the just to that place] where each one shall receive, in his own order, according to the merit of his good deeds, when the body of their humility shall be transformed.’ Likewise in homily 18 on Numbers he says thus: ‘If the soul have not virtues, the flesh shall not come [into the inheritance], nor the soul unto the inheritance, but only unto the judgment of him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.’ Likewise in homily 4 upon Ezekiel, expounding that [passage], ‘Sodom shall be restored,’ etc. — understanding by Sodom the sin of the soul — he blames some of the Hebrews who assert that Sodom shall at some time be restored. Likewise in the exposition of Psalm 37, he exhorts the sinner to prepare himself in this age against the scourges, lest he be consumed [re-wrought] with eternal fires: from which it is known that, according to his opinion, the fire shall be eternal. Finally, if anyone should desire to know how scrupulously Origen spoke concerning Gehenna, let him read the book of Joshua, where — comparing it in diverse places — he brings in, concerning the land of promise, [the wish]: ‘Would that, in the things which we have said, we might not seem to have spoken rashly and perilously.’ And in the book Periarchon [On First Principles], where he speaks concerning the consummation, he says: ‘These things indeed are said by us even with great fear and caution — as by those discussing and treating [them], rather than establishing [them] for certain and definite.’” Whence, how manifest it is that Origen affirmed the restoration of the lost creatures never to be made, the sagacious reader (I think) sufficiently understands.