II. Universal Restorationism Origen’s Answer to Tertullian’s Eternal Torment

1. DISTORTS AN OBVIOUS BIBLE TRUTH

Origen brought forward a neglected Bible truth missed by Tertullian, but in such tragically distorted form as to nullify the inspired provision. That truth was the ultimate extinction of all moral evil. Origen understood the Bible to declare that sin will be brought to an end. Evil will not be permitted to exist forever. He saw that God’s righteousness, justice, mercy, and power are pledged to that end. But Origen erred grievously as to the means and method of accomplishment. At that point he left the Scripture platform completely, to follow human tradition.CFF1 1000.2

The reason for his error is not hard to find—the false Platonic assumption of the universal Innate Immortality of the soul. That was the ignis fatuus (fool’s fire, or will-o’-the-wisp) that led him astray and emboldened him into promising life to those upon whom God had threatened death. And in proclaiming restoration to the incorrigibly wicked, instead of the destruction decreed, he contradicted God and deceived men. While his theory was captivating, it was nonetheless false, invalid, and wholly misleading. That was his gravest single error—Universal Restorationism instead of the ultimate extinction of all unrepentant sinners.CFF1 1000.3

2. PLATO THE SPONSOR OF BOTH VIEWS

But both Origen’s and Tertullian’s philosophies of the destiny of the soul had, strangely enough, been sketched out long before either advocate was born—for Plato had sponsored both views. In his Tartarus Plato had given the prototype of Tertullian’s Hell. But Plato confined his endless misery for the wicked to a few “incurables.”CFF1 1001.1

The vast majority, he held, were curable. And his scene of their punishment after death was the place of their purgation—an Acherusian lake of woe into which the vast majority of souls would go, and from which after a suitable period of suffering they were released or restored. Even in Tartarus, for the incurables, some of the very wicked came forth after complete purgation. ^{77) F. J Church, Plato’s Phaedo (107, 108, 114), in Library of Liberal Arts, no. 30, pp. 62, 63, 69.} So Plato’s pagan philosophy had suggested the slightly variant ideas both to Origen and to Tertullian.CFF1 1001.2

3. LIFE FALSELY PROMISED INSTEAD OF DEATH

Origen altered the intent of the plainest language of Scripture to pledge eternal life to those on whom God had decreed eternal death. Pressing on the Biblical promises of the utter extinction of all evil, he so manipulated the Scriptures thereon as to make them utterly untrustworthy as a guide and authority. Tertullian had made evil, destined to pass with time, to be evil for eternity. He thus violated God’s designated difference between time and eternity. Tertullian had evil existing throughout all eternity in God’s realm of righteousness.CFF1 1001.3

Origen, on the contrary, held to the final extinction only of sin, and not of sinners. With him evil was transitory and would pass. But he made death to be the magic means of salvation. That was his tragic reversal.CFF1 1001.4

It must in fairness be said that Origenism has as much truth (distorted as it therein is) as the rival view of Tertullian; and it presents a more pleasing view of God. But it was only a human system that contradicted the Word of God, which in a hundred places declares there is no hope for those condemned in the judgment. When evil has at last been punished, the reprobate will have passed out of being.CFF1 1002.1

Origen therefore falls under the condemnation of those who strengthen “the hands of the wicked, that he should not return from his wicked way, by promising him life” (Ezekiel 13:22). But in that future age that shall have no end there will be no reprobate, either in Heaven, where Origen had placed them, or in Hell forever, as Tertullian had contended, for there will be a clean universe, brought to pass in God’s way—and not that of Tertullian’s nor of Origen’s.CFF1 1002.2

4. TWO EQUALLY INJURIOUS PERVERSIONS

So It was not without reason that the apostle Paul warned against the subtleties of human philosophy (Colossians 2:8; Acts 20:29, 30) and the deceptive “traditions of men,” and predicted a grave departing from the apostolic faith after the passing of the apostles (2 Thessalonians 2:3). It was the adoption of one alien philosophic dogma that led one school of highly trained men, ^{88) Including Hippolytus Cyprian, Ambrose Chrysostom, and Jerome.} following Tertullian of Carthage, to overstress divine justice and to portray God as a tyrant of unutterable cruelty.CFF1 1002.3

And now another school of theology, ^{99) Including Gregory Thaumaturgus, Pamphilus, Eusebius, Titus, Basil, Diodorus, Didymus, and Gregory of Nyssa.} following Origen of Alexandria, seeking to free the character of God from the charge of injustice and cruelty swung to the opposite extreme. It stressed the restorative power of God and glossed over the sinfulness of sin. This school became fully as injurious to the cause of truth and righteousness, and gilded the blackness of sin with seductive light.CFF1 1002.4

Both departures were the outgrowth of perversions of Bible truths, developed diversely but under the common impulse of the same philosophic fallacy—universal Innate Immortality. The revolting picture of God painted by Tertullian, with his postulate of Eternal Torment, created an understandable revulsion. As a result, a quarter of a century later Origen had stepped forward to counteract it with his countertheory of universal restoration. While Tertullian had consigned reprobate man to Endless Torment in Hell, Origen now converted Hell into a vast Purgatory for the purification of reprobate men and demons, with ultimate restoration of all to joy at the right hand of God forevermore. It was the old story of the pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other—with truth lying between, and sharply separated from, the two false concepts.CFF1 1003.1

5. AVOIDS ONE PITFALL ONLY TO FALL INTO ANOTHER

Thus we see that Origen, earliest known church writer to formulate the theory of Restorationism, ^{1010) Canon Constable rightly remarks, “We cannot find, either among heretical or orthodox teachers the name of a single writer who advocated the theory before Origen” (Duration and Nature of Future Punishment, p, 228).} put it forth in opposition to what he considered to be the vindictive, contradictive, and fantastic assertions made by Tertullian on the Eternal Torment of the wicked. But he avoided one pitfall only to fall into another. He saw that Tertullian, though led by Plato, had plainly fallen into a theological ditch.CFF1 1003.2

But Origen, though noting the fall of Tertullian into an obvious error, did not perceive the cause of that fall. So he took the hand of the same philosophical guide, Plato, and holding to the same premise of universal Innate Immortality, fell into a different ditch, but one just as deep and delusive, and just as alien to Biblical truth. It was a double tragedy.CFF1 1003.3

Tertullian’s doctrine of an eternal Hell of ceaseless torture had presented a glaring target for the shafts of the pagan philosopher Celsus, and for his fierce attacks on such a God as execrable. This helped to drive Origen into the opposite fallacy. Origen countered Tertullian’s eternal Hell postulate with Scripture declarations concerning the final eradication of evil and God’s promise of a sinless universe. But, by connecting these promises of a clean universe with his preconceived notion of the indefeasible immortality of all souls, Origen arrived, logically and inevitably enough, at the erroneous conclusion of a final restoration of even the most incorrigible sinners, and not only of demons but of Satan himself.CFF1 1003.4

As might be expected, with such a view Origen utterly rejected the idea of punishment by literal fire. To him punishment would be by process of intellectual and moral forces, such as remorse of conscience, fiery trial, and the like. These would purify the soul from sin. And death was likewise figurative, and the predicted destruction was not of sinners, but of sins. So the purifying fires of Gehenna would purge away the dross, preparing the soul for the never-ending bliss of Heaven. Yet it was only an ingenious sophistry, brought about by discarding the literal for the metaphysical.CFF1 1004.1