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Colossians, part 6, Early Church Teaching

The Christ Hymn that Paul quoted in Colossians 1:15-20 reflected the dominant belief of the early church, particularly among the Christians in Greece, Asia (now Turkey), and Egypt. It took longer for the New Testament to be translated into Latin, and the gospel did not spread as fast into the Roman world.

Greek and Roman Views

The Greeks and Romans had different cultures and interests. The Greeks, with all their classical statues attempting to depict virtue, beauty, and perfection, were in a search for the ideal—the perfect man. The Romans, on the other hand, had an empire to administer and control, so they were concerned primarily with the pursuit of law and order.

And so the Roman Christians (such as Lactantius, Tertullian, and Augustine) later pictured Jesus as the God of Law and Order. Their concept of divine justice followed the Roman idea that to keep law and order and to deter crime, they had to increase the punishment to intolerable levels. Thus, as time passed, one could be executed for relatively small crimes. This happens when deterrence takes precedence over justice. The criminal is more quickly discarded through excessive punishment.

On the other hand, biblical law concerns itself with justice, built upon the basic principle that the severity of judgment is always directly proportional to the crime itself. Hence, if you steal $100, you owe your victim $200, no more and no less. The deterrence factor is always subservient to the establishment of justice, and the criminal is more easily restored through justice.

In biblical law, justice is not done until full restitution has been made to all the victims of injustice. In Roman law, “justice” is not done until the criminal has been punished and others deterred from committing the same type of crime. And so, for example, Tertullian, the Christian Roman lawyer, bitterly writes in 203 A.D.

“How I shall admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many kings . . . groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness, so many magistrates who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in raging fire.” (de Spectaculis, 30)

In the same year (203 A.D.), Clement of Alexandria fled for his life during the persecution of the Roman Emperor, Severus, after being the head of the Church in Alexandria for 13 years. In Stromata, VII, 26 he writes:

“God does not wreak vengeance, for vengeance is to return evil for evil, and God punishes only with an eye to the good.”

Notice the great contrast between Tertullian the Roman lawyer and Clement of Alexandria, the Greek bishop. Clement understood that because God is love, even His judgments are rooted in love and are designed to correct the sinner—not to destroy him. Again, in commenting upon 1 Timothy 4:9-11, where we read that He is the Savior of all men, especially those that believe, Clement writes again:

“And how is He Saviour and Lord, if not the Saviour and Lord of all? But He is the Savior of those who have believed... and the Lord of those who have not believed… for all things are arranged with a view to the salvation of the Universe by the Lord of the Universe, both generally and particularly… But necessary corrections, through the goodness of the great Overseeing Judge, both by the attendant angels, and through various preliminary judgments, or through the Great and Final Judgment, compel egregious sinners to repent.”

Clement also wrote in Stromata, VII, 6,

“We say that the fire purifies not the flesh but sinful souls, not an all-devouring vulgar fire, but the 'wise fire' as we call it, the fire that 'pierceth the soul' which passes through it.”

The “lake of fire,” he says, is not an eternal torture pit but a “wise fire.” It is the “fiery law” of Deuteronomy 33:2 KJV, and, as Deuteronomy 4:6 says, “that is your wisdom.” Again, Clement wrote in Ecl. Proph., XXV, 4,

“Fire is conceived of as a beneficent and strong power, destroying what is base, preserving what is good; therefore this fire is called 'wise' by the Prophets.”

Where did Clement get this idea of the “wise fire” that purifies, rather than destroys? In Malachi 3:2–3, God says that when He comes, He will be “like a refiner’s fire and like launderers’ soap.” He will sit as a refiner and purify the sons of Levi, refining them like gold and silver. It takes wisdom and knowledge to use fire to purify silver and gold. Yet the fire does not destroy metal.

Again, we read in Zechariah 13:9, “I will bring the third part through the fire, and refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested.” Here fire symbolizes purification and testing of God’s people, not to destroy them or torture them forever, but to save them.

Isaiah 48:10 contains the same “refinery” metaphor.

Clement certainly did not get his understanding from the pagan Egyptian culture surrounding him. According to Jaques de Goff's book, The Birth of Purgatory, pages 19 and 20,

“The Egyptian Hell was particularly impressive and highly refined... Confinement and imprisonment played an important role. The tortures were bloody, and punishment by fire was frequent and terrifying... When it came to the topography of Hell, the Egyptian imagination knew no limits... Intermediate states of phases in the other-worldly process of purification did not exist.”

Jaques de Goff also informs us on page 53 of the contrast between the Egyptian view of divine punishment and that of the early Christians,

“From the Old Testament, Clement and Origen took the notion that fire is a divine instrument, and from the New Testament the idea of baptism by fire (from the Gospels) and the idea of a purificatory trial after death (from Paul).”

Few Christians today realize that the Church’s doctrine of a torturous burning hell is much closer to the pagan Egyptian view than to the view of the early Church. The fact that the Egyptians taught eternal torture in both hell and purgatory stands in direct opposition to the teaching of the Church in the first few centuries. Only later did the Church finally come to agree with the Roman view, as well as the Egyptian religious teaching on the subject.

When Clement fled Alexandria in 203, his most brilliant student, Origen, replaced him as head of the Church in Alexandria. After Paul, Origen was the first great Theologian of the Church, and his writings were the most influential of his time. Though he did not originate the idea of universal reconciliation, he is today the most well-known Universalist of all time, simply because of the sheer volume of his writings and the extent of his influence. Hence, universal reconciliation is often called (inaccurately) “Origenism.”

Origen of Alexandria

In 213 Origen visited Rome for a short time and then went to Arabia at the invitation of some of the Bedouin tribes who requested Christian teaching. He returned to Alexandria in 216 about the time that the Roman Emperor massacred many of the citizens because some had jeered at him. Origen then moved to Caesarea in Palestine, where the bishops persuaded him to expound the scriptures publicly. However, they did not ordain him formally, and this became an issue to Demetrius, the bishop in Alexandria, who was, by now, becoming jealous of Origen's talent and popularity.

Demetrius wrote to Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, as well as to Theocristus, bishop of Caesarea, complaining that they were allowing an unordained minister to teach the people. They wrote back that this practice had been sanctioned several times in the past. Demetrius was unsatisfied and sent a letter to Origen, ordering him to return at once to Alexandria. He complied humbly.

Then about five or six years later, Origen received a letter of invitation from Mammaea, the mother of Alexander, the Roman Emperor. She was living in Antioch and invited him to come there to teach—and even sent a full military escort for him. There was little that bishop Demetrius could do about that! After his stay in Antioch, as he passed through Palestine, the bishops there ordained him as a Presbyter.

Demetrius resented the fact that these bishops, in effect, had bypassed him, and so he declared Origen to be unfit for the priesthood on the grounds that he was a self-made eunuch. His position was based upon the law of the Old Testament priesthood in Leviticus 21:20. (In his youth, he had taken too literally Jesus’ comment in Matthew 19:12 about self-made eunuchs.) Here is evidence that even in the third century the Church's priesthood was already reverting back to the requirements of the Levitical priesthood instead of Melchizedek as established by Christ.

By this time Origen had written a number of books and commentaries, which were being spread throughout the Greek-speaking world, making him one of the most well-known Bible teachers of the day. Meanwhile, bishop Demetrius made life difficult for him in spite of his humble submission, and so in 231 A.D. he decided to retire to Palestine, where he was warmly received by the bishops there.

Demetrius, however, assembled all the bishops of Egypt to condemn Origen, but the bishops only deprived him of his office and teaching position at the School in Alexandria. Demetrius became still angrier and called for another council (232 A.D.), inviting only those bishops who agreed with him or could be manipulated. Thus, Demetrius succeeded in excommunicating Origen from the Church.

In the East, the bishops ignored this excommunication and freely welcomed Origen, but in the West, particularly in Rome, it was a different matter. The Roman mind was more interested in law and order than in justice, and to them, Origen was now a non-Christian rebel. It was not for any of Origen's teachings that he was condemned and excommunicated, but rather to satisfy the pride of a carnally-minded bishop who took offense at his fellow bishops in Palestine for honoring a man who had attained greater popularity than himself.

Bishop Demetrius died shortly after this, but the damage was done. The succeeding bishops of Alexandria respected the excommunication decree and did not attempt to reverse it. Meanwhile, Origen continued to write his commentaries in Palestine until a new Roman Emperor came to power named Maximin (235 A.D.). He began another round of persecution of Church leaders, causing Origen to go into hiding and later moving to Athens.

He continued to travel and teach at the invitation of various bishops, even corresponding with the first (secret) Christian Emperor, Philip, who ruled from 244-249. Philip was killed in battle by Decius, who then became the next emperor in 250. Perhaps because of this, Origen was arrested and tortured for some length of time with typical Roman threats of being burned alive. Origen was true to his own principles and did not deny the faith. When Decius died in 251, his tormentors allowed him to “escape.”

Origen died two years later in the city of Tyre (253 A.D.). Though he has become the most well-known Universalist of the early Church, this is only because he was the most prolific writer and the most influential theologian of his day. It should be stressed, however, that he did not have to convince any of the Greek-speaking bishops that God would save all mankind. This teaching was not even an issue, because they all assumed it was true. If it had been considered to be heresy, they would have rejected him and excommunicated him for teaching it.

The fourth century is known as The Golden Age of Universalism, in which the restoration of all things reached its zenith through influential bishops such as Gregory of Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyassa. In the introduction to the writings of Gregory Thaumaturgus ("Wonder Worker"), bishop of Caesarea in the third century, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. VI, page 3 says,

“Alexandria continues to be the head of Christian learning... We have already observed the continuity of the great Alexandrian school; how it arose, and how Pantaenus begat Clement, and Clement begat Origen. So Origen begat Gregory, and so the Lord has provided for the spiritual generation of the Church teachers, age after age, from the beginning. Truly, the Lord gave to Origen a holy seed, better than natural sons and daughters.”