The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Michael McClymond vs Dr. Ramelli on patristics

Thanks [tag]Caleb Fogg[/tag] -

On a related point, apparently is was Eugène de Faye, in his ‘Origène’ who was one of the first to observe that Origen’s system has affinities with the Gnostic speculations of his time inasmuch as like them Origen in Peri Archon sees the drama of creation, fall and redemption in terms of a descent from Unity into division and an ascent of restoration into Unity. However, as Dr Ramelli argues – rightly I think now I know what she’s talking about – this is not evidence of Origen being influenced by the Gnostics who he disputed with. It is evidence that Origen, the Gnostics, (and Philo of Alexandria, and the pagan Platonist Celsus who Origen composed a refutation of etc…)were all arguing with each other within the parameters of the thought world of Middle Platonism where the pattern of descent and ascent were part and parcel of the discourse about cosmology – but Origen was defining an Orthodox Christian Middle Platonism against his detractors (and this of course meant discarding those parts of Plato that did not agree with Christian Revelation – one example of many is that he discarded the assertion in Plato’s dialogues that the really wicked, the murderers and the tyrants – will remain in torment in Tartarus forever).

The Gnostics taught of a series of descents from spirit into matter, to be followed at last by a restoration of the spiritual seeds/sparks imprisoned in matter to their original home. On this theme they played with all manner of mythic variations. Strutwolf – cited by McClymond - sees Origen as being influenced by the ‘Fall of the Eternities’ in the Valentian Gnostics. Jonas – again cited by McClymond – makes similar connections drawing on Butterworth’s now discredited translation as an authoritative text.

However, the Christian theology of Origen in Peri Archon, avoids this mythologizing. Yes the process of descent and ascent runs through it all. The Son is begotten of the Father by an eternal act of will. But Gnostic theories of emanation are rejected on the ground that they involve a division of the divine nature.

When Origen speak of the creation of rational beings, called either minds or souls these are definitely outside the Godhead, as the Son and Spirit are definitely within. Whereas for the Gnostics rational beings are the fallen eternities that originally existed as uncreated parts of the divine unity. And so on …

Of course the Gnostics, as we know from the original texts now available from the Nag Hammadi library, did not teach universal restoration of souls, but only the restoration of some souls (and then this restoration was not if individuals as individuals but of individuals absorbed into the divine monad). I have recently found out that there is actually one mention of ‘apocatastasis’ in the Nag Hammadi texts –

The Gnostic Gospel of Philip 180–350c – probably a Valentian text - contains the term:

‘’There is a rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is certainly necessary to be born again through the image. Which one? Resurrection. The image must rise again through the image. The bridal chamber and the image must enter through the image into the truth: this is the restoration (apokatastasis). Not only must those who produce the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, do so, but have produced them for you. If one does not acquire them, the name (“Christian”) will also be taken from him’’

Whatever this text may mean (and its exact meaning is a matter of debate) it is clear that those who do not produce/acquire the theurgic formula of the divine name will have their name taken from them. And this exclusivsm is affirmed right at the end of the Gospel:

‘’If anyone becomes a son of the bridal chamber, he will receive the light. If anyone does not receive it while he is here, he will not be able to receive it in the other place’’.

So I am now convinced that Dr McClymond is wrongly conflating a few ideas in his assertion that Gnosticism is the source of Christian Universalism:

  1. Yes there are affinities between the Gnostics and Origen in the very basic pattern of descent and ascent in the cosmic drama a pattern which they share because both work within the discourse of the cosmology of Middle Platonism .

  2. However, the Gnostics did not teach universal salvation – this is clear from the Nag Hammadi texts. The idea that they did teach universal salvation comes from nineteenth century scholars such as Neander used by and referred to by Hanson and the source of McClymond’s assertion about Valentinian, Basilledian and Carpocration Gnostic universalism in his review. But they made their claims in the absence of any proper evidence. We now have the evidence in the Nag Hammadi texts etc that proves them wrong. No scholar of Gnosticism today would claim that the Gnostics taught universal salvation. (I’m not sure where the nineteenth century scholars got their ideas from. I am aware that Ireanaeus in ‘Against Heresies’ claims that the Carpocrations claimed that ‘all souls will be saved’ – but no Carpocration texts have survived to corroborate this, and the original teaching (as far as I can see) may well have been that all ‘psychics’ as a class of begins will be saved rather than all individual beings.

  3. Dr McClymond cites articles that draw attention to affinities/influences between Origen’s thought on cosomology in terms of descent and ascent to try and suggest that these prove that Origen got his universalism form the Gnostics – but this is a smoke screen. The articles only talk about descent from Unity and ascent to Unity as common ground and not about finding ‘Apocatastasis Panton’ - meaning the restoration of all beings - in the Gnostic scriptures (and the Williams article about Gnosticism and Determinism cited by Dr McClymond does not claim that the Gnostics were universalists – far from it)

[tag]Jason Pratt[/tag] see two posts above when you have time :slight_smile: Caleb alerted me to the Doc’s review of Ramelli earlier this year. Ach I was reluctant to look and engage - but when you have tried to figure someone out in the past and spent a lot of time on it the synapses soon start clicking into place (if rather hazily at first). Anyway - from recent reading I think I’m finally beginning to understand the precise basis of the Doc’s premise that Universalism came from Gnosticism - and yes it’s a false correlation :slight_smile:

Just read them this morning, Sobor. (Note: the reason I didn’t get a tag notice, is because forum names can’t have spaces in them, so properly including a space between my first and last name broke the tag function.)

Looks legit, although I think I recall Dr. R saying that the term apokatastasis does show up in Gnostic texts with some regularity as a term borrowed from Platonism, although she doesn’t give many examples. (There’s a whole other tome coming on this topic, though!)

She definitely agrees in the Tome that the Gnostics only expected the spiritual people to be restored, and in a few cases also at least some of the soulish people (the pneumas and the psuches respectively), but not the vast majority who are only animals really. Whether the Gnostics treated the vast majority as being really people seems debatable, and one could make an argument I suppose that those Gnostics who went the distance as far as the soulish people (but not all did) might have believed that all actual persons would be restored, and so be universal salvationists of a sort in that sense. But they either didn’t consider all humans were real people, or else didn’t believe that all humans would be restored.

And of course their notion of restoration wasn’t salvation of persons from sin as persons either, but more like a pantheistic elimination of personhood, the ‘person’ (however real it might or might not be as a person) being a false and tragic division of the divine monad and/or its energies.

When Dr. R quotes Irenaeus lambasting Mark the (Gnostic) Magician, Ir does seem to be quoting him that all beings (not merely all spiritual and perhaps also all soulish people) shall return to one note and one same utterance. But Ir’s complaint is that this undoes creation altogether as having been an evil or a mistake, with the creation eventually ceasing to exist as such. Dr. R goes on to quote Ir somewhat extensively as teaching that God shall save and clean all reality, including all persons (or all human persons anyway, leaving aside the rebel spiritual powers), in the apokatastasis (explicitly mentioned by Ir as such) with the disappearance of all evil. Ir brings up Jonah’s descent into and, repentantly, out of hell, swallowed by Satan as the great sea dragon, as a figure of the experience of all humanity since primal rebellion against God.

If anything, then, a denial of universalism indicates a similarity on that point with the Gnostics.

More ironically (as we’ve noted upthread or on one of the related threads), Calvinists like Dr. McCly have a strong relation to Gnosticism in the idea of only some people specially chosen to be saved. While Calv/Augustinian election doesn’t overtly promote the idea that these are a spiritually elite minority, but rather what might as well be a random selection from God’s entirely inscrutable but gracious purpose, it isn’t hard to elide into having that attitude.

To be fair, Calv theologians do recognize and warn against lapsing into that attitude: on Gnostic plans (generally speaking) the idea of spiritual elitism makes inherent sense because those who shall be saved are fractions (roughly speaking) of that-which-is-God, all other reality being dross or worse. Their return to the monad divine nature is even a natural inevitability, akin to the Greco-Roman ideas of the never-ending cycle of natural development, breakdown, and recapitulation, albeit filtered through a Platonic application of such ideas (thence via early Middle Platonism). But even on Calv soteriology, there is no natural progressive necessity in the return of the elect, but rather God’s gracious choice when, theoretically, He could have let them burn hopelessly (whether eternally or in annihilation) in their sins.

The assurance of Christian salvation by contrast (and this is a point relevant to us, too, since universalists per se share the Calv gospel assurance of persistence to victory) isn’t a mechanical inevitability but rooted in God’s personal skill and omni-capability worthy of our personal trust even when things are temporarily going badly for us (and very badly).

On the other hand, I’ve run across one or two Calvs before who regard the hopelessly lost as not even being really persons but only what philosophers now call philosophical zombies, indistinguishable from real people by us from our perspective but really only just fictional creations puppeted into existence by Satan, or perhaps by God to serve dramatic purposes, like non-player characters created by a game-master for players to interact with in a game. Those Calvs would actually be universalists somewhat like the sort of Gnostics mentioned above who regarded the finally lost as only animals and not really people, all real people being restored eventually. (But most Calvs realize this would make a hash of moral warnings lodged against the apparently hopelessly lost.)

Amen! As well as His “eudokia” (good will/kind intention) towards all men, especially those who believe.

3 Blessed [is] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who did bless us in every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,
4 according as He did choose us in him before the foundation of the world, for our being holy and unblemished before Him, in love,
5 having foreordained us to the adoption of sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to** the good pleasure of His will**,
6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, in which He did make us accepted in the beloved,
7 in whom we have the redemption through his blood, the remission of the trespasses, according to the riches of His grace,
8 in which He did abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence,
9 having made known to us the secret of His will, according to His good pleasure, that He purposed in Himself,
10 in regard to the dispensation of the fulness of the times, to bring into one the whole in the Christ, both the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth – in him;
11 in whom also we did obtain an inheritance, being foreordained according to the purpose of Him who causes all things to work according to the counsel of His will,

Aha – yes thanks (I stand by the rest but nuance it all in the light of your comments Jason). Yes that’s good clarification; and the return to one note sounds like all human beings absorbed back into the monad and ceasing to exist as people.

And it’s good to know about the more extensive use of ‘Apocatastasis in the Nag Hammadi texts than the Gospel of Phillip. I have read a paper on Pagan apocatastasis by Dr Ramelli and in this she says that the apocatastasis spoken of is about the return of the philosophical soul to the monad – often envisaged as an ascent to above the stars (so Dr McClmond has a partial point but the Gnostics don’t speak about the apocatastasis panton). In this paper she said that pagan Apocatastasis panton is first found in late antiquity in the Neo-Platonist Macrobius (although the idea is certainly not found in Plotinus and his immediate followers). Macrobius thinks the idea was taught by Plato – but it was not. So she speculates that he has mistaken Plato for Origen.

Well, in the Tome (during in her brief overview specifically dedicated to apokatastasis in contemporary Gnostic and Gnostic Christian writings, though she talks about them more farther on throughout the book I think), Dr. R does say they refer {ta panta} to the apokatastasis, and also… I forget the grammatic form but it’s the Greek word for “the whole” which she allows means “all beings” synonymously with {ta panta} the all. But again, it’s really more about everything ceasing to exist as “everything” and becoming the monad again or else going out of existence altogether.

Also, I should make a slight correction that the Gnostics regarded most people as not even having animal life! – it was the psychic or soulish people who were basically only animals, and the Gnostic groups disputed about whether they would be annihilated or absorbed back into the monad, and whether that would be all or only some. There doesn’t seem to have been any dispute about whether the less-than-animal people would be annihilated, any more than they disputed about whether any of the spiritual pneumatic people would fail to be resolved back into the monad: obviously the absolute trash wouldn’t have any (Gnostic version of) salvation.

OK Jason :slight_smile: - so I’ll drop the ‘panton’ bit to make the distinction (Leibniz made it - and he’s erm slightly dated :-/ :smiley:). Did I suggest somewhere that the psychics were not animals? We’ll that was careless of me - animal means having an anima or soul. Good to talk precision with you Jason :slight_smile: :slight_smile: It’s the only way I can focus on these things :slight_smile:

No, I was the one that said the Gnostics didn’t treat the psychics as animals. They did, but they had differences between themselves about whether animals could also be persons or not, which came out in their differences between whether the soulish/psychic humans could become spiritual persons or not.

Aha :slight_smile:

According to Amazon, “The Devil’s Redemption…” will be available in April, 2018:

amazon.com/Devils-Redemptio … 0801048567

Here is Ramelli’s 890 page tome on Universalism in the early church for free reading & download:

www.faulknerfornewyork.com/library/down … &type=full

It’s due to be released electronically & by paper in 2 volumes on the 5th:

http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-devil-s-redemption-2-volumes/340801

https://www.christianbook.com/the-devils-redemption-2-volumes/michael-mcclymond/9780801048562/pd/048562

For a free preview:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=HXQ1DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT1155&lpg=PT1155&dq=Henri+Crouzel,+a+leading+Origen+scholar&source=bl&ots=p2DUz8kzOH&sig=lgtReb_jnz-ER9-PV6bZPH0QJzM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjut9K-g7TbAhVmw1QKHQcADeMQ6AEILzAC#v=onepage&q=Henri%20Crouzel%2C%20a%20leading%20Origen%20scholar&f=false

A related thread is:

I’ve read parts of it and I’ve had a chat with Dr Mike at Patheos. Hmmmmm

Dick - you big tease! Could you give us a bit more than hmmmm? :wink:

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It’s very, very long at over 1,300 pages and is actually the work of more than one person. I’m not bowled over by it - but what do I know …

Hi Dave old china -

It is such a long book that it will take time to do justice to – and I guess there is no rush because we’ve had to wait four years for it to come out (and Mike has had a whole team of Phd students working on it with him, plus an Origen scholar). I think it may well become the standard authority on universalism for a time among evangelical scholars who are anti-universalist (and the intention is for it to have an even wider appeal).

However – yeah I’ve lots of misgivings about his historical arguments in the chapters I’ve read, certainly. I may try and tell you about the details when summer is over (busy at the moment because I’ve been retraining to do creative arts and reminiscence work with people with dementia). But I think this book does need some sort of response – and I the big hitters, including Robin Parry, are on the case.

So do I. It would be interesting to know :sunny:

I’ve no idea Qaz. I think it’s probably best if a response is made at some point. However, again I think it’s probably better if a number of people respond to different portions of the book because the book is so long (and a number of people were involved in it too).

Wow, I’m at Vancouver’s Regent College and just realized that McClymond’s two thick tomes are sitting on their new books shelves. I hope to at least read his sections on Parry and Talbott’s approach. Perhaps more feasible would be for them to respond to those shorter sections.

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