I have no idea why Dr McClymond in his review of Dr Ramelli’s tome again asserts that Origen was forgotten and/or shunned in the West before the Jesuit ‘new theologians’ in the twentieth century. Origen’s writings went through eight printed editions during the late fifteenth, early sixteenth century Renaissance – including Erasmus’s annotated edition published two years after his death (the first was Jacques Merlin’s 1512 edition).Yes Origen’s works were popular in the Italian Florentine academy and in this setting his ‘metaphysical speculations’ were savoured by those who were highly syncretism in their Christian Platonism and mingled the Greek Fathers with Hermetic writings and with Cabala. However, I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that these aristocrats were universalists – Pico of the Florentine academy simply opened up the debate that Origen himself might be saved; and Dr Mike does refer to this alone in passing in his review.
However, the reception of Origen with the Northern Christian humanists was different. Erasmus praised Origen as a hero of the Faith, an exemplar of the spiritual life, and commended him as a prince of scriptural exegesis and philology. He did not commend Origen’s ‘speculations’ (as they seemed at this date) but argued in mitigation that these were made at a time when Christian orthodoxy was still fluid. He also sometimes questioned Origen’s allegorizing when he deemed that this was taken to excess –but did not attack allegorizing in principle.
Erasmus himself emphasised the goodness of God as primary and of God’s overflowing mercy that fully desires to save everyone and the asserted – using the early Greek Fathers as his authority including Origen – that human beings have a limited freedom in responding to this mercy.
He had a wide hope beyond confessional boundaries in believing that following the Way of Christ – which he called ‘The Philosophy of Christ’ – in response to justification through faith, was what ensured salvation rather than adhering to a confessional faith narrowly defined.
He put the philology of ancient Greek firmly on the map of European scholarship through his Textus Receptus of the New Testament which paved the way for later discussions of the meaning of ‘Aionian’(but James Windett and George Rust in England later in the seventeenth century for example).
And of course the Church Father he loved best and raised the profile of most was Origen – citing him liberally as an authority in his Annotations of the New Testament and in his widely translated Paraphrases of the New Testament . The Paraphrases were given royal approval to be read in Churches both by Edward IV and Elizabeth 1st in the English Reformation for example and were often cited in controversies with Anglican Calvinists against the doctrine of double predestination. Erasmus did not affirm apocatastasis in the Annotations or the Paraphrases – but through these Origen became rehabilitated as someone to take note of.
For these reasons – and because of his widespread influence among so many in the early modern period (of all confessional denominations and shades of belief – radicals and conservatives too) – Erasmus’ rehabilitation of Origen has to be reckoned with as a major influence on the revival of universalism in the late seventeenth century in scholarly circles I think.
Also his influence on the Reformation radicals in the sixteenth century is now well attested to and some substantial research has been done in this field. For example, Morwena Ludlow in her paper of Hans Denck’s universalism attest to this. She has found no evidence that Denck actually taught that everyone would be saved from his writings’ He was simply accused of this by those who misunderstood his writings, although she says that he may probably have hoped for this. Nor does she find any evidence that Denck knew Origen’s writings – because he has no post mortem salvation scheme in his works. However, she attests to the influence of Erasmus in his wide hope and his emphasis on the saving goodness of God towards all people (and through historical connections between the two). There are a number of other Anabaptist radicals who are said to have taught universalism that have not been scrutinised yet in the way that Morwena Ludlow does with Hands Denck. Perhaps they were Universalists by report only, and there is no way of assessing the claim as there is with Denck whose extensive writings have survived (the Dunker sect of Anabaptists who certainly were universalists arose later in the seventeenth century).
We do know that the fear that some Anabaptists were Universalists – a belief was wrongly associated with the libertine Anabaptists who took over Munster – was often to do with them questioning late medieval notions of Satan as the one who can cause crop failure, cattle diseases, and cause people to fly on broomsticks. They were sometimes accused of atheism for this and again the ideas go back to Erasmus who mocked medieval superstitions and saw Satan as primarily a force in the human heart.
Erasmus never asserted universal salvation. But due to his notion of the goodness of God for much of his life he asserted that the fires of hell are torments of conscience from the habit of not being able to stop sinning – and this is a radical idea that got him into lots of trouble. It suggests that the punishments of hell are not inflicted by God but are self inflicted. And this idea in the hands of radicals like Sebastian Frank who commented on it very sympathetically in his Chronicles of Heretics certainly could and did later inspire some Universalists.
Whatever Erasmus may have intended he had a huge influence on the positive reception of Origen and of the universalism of seventeenth century Origenists such as Le Clerc and some of the Cambridge Platonists. I think it wrong to ignore Erasmus and the reception of Origen in the Northern Renaissance when looking at the history of early modern universalism because this sticks out like a sore thumb. Well I think he’s very important.
I think D.P. Walker makes an excellent case in Decline of Hell– that I’ve never seen gainsaid- that the decline of belief in eternal damnation is part and parcel of a shift in sentiment about cruelty - to animals, in child rearing, in punishment of criminals etc - that took place during the seventeenth century. It’s difficult to say which came first – the shift in sentiment or the ideas (they were probably interrelated I think). They were influenced by the gradual mitigation of the power of Magisterial Churches to control thought and sentiment too - which comes with the invention of the printing press. Whether it comes from wide hopers like Curione, mitigators like Simon Episcopus and the Remonstrant College in Holland, annihilationist like Socinus’ followers Sonor and Camphuysen, or cautious universalists like Le Clerc and George Rust, the influence of Erasmus is seminal in the sphere of the ideas that expressed this shift – including ideas about religious toleration that he expressed first too in a tentative way. I think there is certainly a link between universalism and toleration being ideas that arrived in the mainstream at the same time.