One important problem with ‘Origenism’

 

One important problem with ‘Origenism’

Associated with the Fifth Ecumenical Council (held in 553), there is a list of 15 anathemas that are directed against Origenism. The first and the fourteenth are of particular interest in this post:

1)       If anyone advocates the mythical pre-existence of souls and the monstrous restoration that follows from this, let him be anathema.

14)  If anyone says that there will be one henad of all rational beings, when the hypostases and numbers are annihilated together with bodies, and that knowledge about rational beings will be accompanied by the destruction of the universes, the shedding of bodies, and the abolition of names, and there will be identity of knowledge as of hypostases, and that in this mythical restoration there will be only pure spirits, as there were in their nonsensical notion of pre-existence, let him be anathema. (source: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2026/01/09/apokatastasis-origen-and-the-fifth-ecumenical-council-part-3/ )

These two anathemas clearly condemn a doctrine of restoration (apokatastasis) that is coupled with a belief in a state of ‘pre-existence of souls’ and the 14th anathema explicitly asserts that the final state will be the same as the initial state.

One problem is the ‘deterministic’ language that is used here: the final state in the 1st anathema is said to ‘follow upon’ the state of ‘pre-existence’. However, the biggest problem, in my opinion, was another.

In his discussion against Origen of Alexandria (c.a. 185-253), Augustine of Hippo (c.a. 354-430) at one point affirms that:

"But the Church, not without reason, condemned him [Origen] for this and other errors, especially for his theory of the ceaseless alternation of happiness and misery, and the interminable transitions from the one state to the other at fixed periods of ages" (City of God, 21.17, source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/120121.htm ) 

It is a debated issue if Origen himself asserted some doctrines that were attributed to him[1]. However, if by ‘Origenism’ we mean a system in which the final state of creation will be the same as the initial state, it certainly follows that sins and consequent falls from that ‘final’ state will happen again and, therefore, the supposedly ‘final’ state will not be final at all. But, rather, as Augustine tells us the consequence is a cyclical cosmology in which there will be a succession of state of blessedness and fallen states forever and ever.

 Indeed, if human beings (or, more generally, rational beings) existed in a state of blessedness from which they fell because they sinned and the ‘restoration’ (apokatastasis) will be a restoration to a state which is the same as the one in the beginning, it certainly follows that such a supposedly ‘final’ state will never be truly final. Sins in such a ‘final’ state will be always possible and the same goes for the consequent ‘falls’ from such a ‘final’ state. So, this ‘Origenist’ system doesn’t offer any chance of truly definitive salvation. The necessary consequence is that a true salvation is simply impossible and human beings (or, more generally, rational beings) are forever trapped in an unending cycle of ‘falls’ or ‘restorations’ (or at least, they will be always be trapped in a state in which falls will be forever possible).   

So whatever one think the original teachings of Origen were, it is clear to me that the belief in a restoration (apokatastasis) that  leads to the same condition of the initial state would lead to a sort of eternal cyclical universe in which history loses completely its meaning and, most importantly, a true final state, a true eschaton in which there is a permanent salvation is, indeed, impossible.

Of course, there are also other problems with this conception of ‘restoration’ – if individuality seems to be ‘abolished’ as the 14th anathema says, is it even meaningful to speak of a true ‘salvation’  or even a true ‘restoration’… A restoration of what? However, the main problem, I believe, is the one I described before: if the supposedly ‘final’ state will be the same as the initial, there is no real final state.

Clearly, if there is no true final state, the situation is completely helpless. We can think, for instance, of an Indian Samsara, the cycle of deaths and rebirths, without the possibility of Liberation[2] that Indian religions promise[3].

 


[2] Often called ‘Moksha’ or ‘Nirvana’.

[3] It is more like Nietzsche’s ‘eternal return’. If that was true, despite what Nietzsche said, everything would be meaningless and the world would be an eternal prison from which we can never escape and in which there is no hope for any kind of improvement (as it remains forever the same).

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