Origen's Universalism

Johannes Quasten, Patrology, vol. II: The Ante-Nicene Literature After Irenaeus (Westminster: Christian Classics, 1990) 87.

Origen does not know of any eternal fire or punishment of hell. All sinners will be saved, even the demons and Satan himself will be purified by the Logos. When this has been achieved, Christ's second coming and the resurrection of all men, not in material, but in spiritual bodies, will follow, and God will be all in all[.]

Origen (second-third centuries C.E.) bases this belief in part on I Corinthians 15:22-28, which says that Christ must reign until God has put all things under his feet, in subjection to Christ. According to the passage, the last enemy to be destroyed is death, presumably through the resurrection. Then, God will be all in all.

For Origen, this passage means that God will cleanse all souls and purge them from vice, as he subjects them to the authority of Christ. After this process, the souls will receive a new spiritual body at the resurrection, when the last enemy (death) is finally defeated. Then, God will be "all in all" in each person and the entire world, for there will be nothing contrary to God. See First Principles, BOOK III, Chapters 4-6.

I have questions about this scenario:

1. Origen is big on free will. Commenting on De Princ 3.5.3, Quasten states: Origen derived...the last conclusion [that God will create worlds after this one] from his concept of the created spirit whose free will enables it to apostacize from good and turn to evil whenever it wishes to do so. Such a relapse of the spirits makes a new corporeal world necessary and thus one world follows the other and the creation of the world becomes an eternal act (90).

In my post, Origen on the Fall of (Pre-Existent) Man, I discussed Origen's view that we were once souls who sinned, with the result that God disciplined us by creating a material world and placing us in flesh-and-blood bodies. For Origen, creation is God's response to souls sinning. But Origen seems to believe that God has created a number of worlds before this one, and that he will create a number of worlds after this one. Why? Because we'll always have free will, so the possibility of us sinning will continually exist.

But how does Origen reconcile his belief in free will with his universalism? Critics of universalism maintain that the doctrine contradicts free will in its assertion that God will force everyone to accept him. Does Origen see the two concepts as mutually contradictory? Perhaps he harmonizes them by saying that God's chastisements will influence the sinner to consider sin distasteful, meaning that God will use external afflictions to affect free will.

2. Origen discusses the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit in his Commentary on John, Book II, Chapter 6. He cites Matthew 12:32, which says that those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit will receive no forgiveness, either in this age, or in the age to come. Does Origen reconcile this verse with his universalism?

In De Princ 1, 6, 1, a universalist passage, Origen affirms that "everyone will be subjected to punishment for his sins," but the punishment will be temporary and purifying. Maybe Origen holds that those who blasphemed the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven but will still enter God's kingdom in the end. Their unforgiven state is made evident in the fact that they have to endure some form of punishment, even if it is temporary. But after their punishment, they will have done their time, and they can then enter the kingdom of God. Is this a plausible interpretation of Origen?

3. I wonder how Origen reconciles his eschatological scenario with the Book of Revelation. Origen says that the second coming of Christ and the resurrection will come after the purification of souls in hell or purgatory. In Revelation 20:12-15, however, there is a different order: (1.) Christ returns and rules for a thousand years, (2.) the dead are raised when the thousand years are over, (3.) the dead are judged, and (4.) the bad are thrown into hell. Origen may not have been a pre-millennialist, but how does he deal with Revelation 20's claim that hell will come after the resurrection, not before?

In First Principles, BOOK II, Chapter 10, Origen seems to assume that hell will come after the resurrection, but he still discusses "fire" in reference to chastisement and cleansing. Maybe Origen didn't get bogged down in the literal details of his eschatological scenario, since he believed that the literal meaning of Scripture was not as important as the more spiritual ways of reading it.