3rd century (condemnation – 6th century)

Origen: the "restoration of all things" (apokatastasis) and its condemnation

Origen drew from the doctrine of the preexistence and prehistoric fall of souls a conclusion about the end: "the end is always like the beginning," and on the basis of 1 Corinthians 15:24–28 he taught that the educational process will end in the restoration of all rational beings, including the demons and the devil, and God will be "all in all." The fire of judgment is for him not eternal punishment but purification, a "fever" that destroys the disease; he considered the literal teaching on the resurrection of the physical body a teaching "for the simple" and spoke of a new, spiritual form of the body. Even the apokatastasis, according to González, is not final: other worlds may follow this one, since minds are free; Origen himself stressed that here he should not be followed as a rule of faith. Methodius of Olympus opposed him from the standpoint of chiliasm and typology, and in the 6th century the Church condemned this version of universalism; the version of Gregory of Nyssa, who abandoned preexistence, was not officially condemned but did not become dogma.