Commenting
on Acts 3:20-21, Ilaria L.E. Ramelli wrote the following about how Origen
interpreted this text to teach universal salvation:
Acts 3:20-21 includes the only occurrence of
the noun apokatastasis in Scripture.
Peter, who is delivering a speech to “the Jews” in Jerusalem, at Pentecost,
announces the eschatological “times of universal
restoration”:
Repent/convert, that your sins may be
cancelled, and the times of consolation may come, coming from the face of the
Lord, and he may send Jesus Christ, who was handed for you. Heaven must keep
him until the times of the restoration of
all beings [αποκαταστασεως παντων], of which God has spoken by means of his holy prophets from time
immemorial.
The eschatological
consolation and universal restoration will come when all have repented and
their sins have thus been forgiven by God. Then will God’s promise to Abraham
be fulfilled: “All the
families of the earth will be blessed in your offspring” (Gen 12:3; Acts 3:25).
Universal restoration parallels the eschatological consolation. Both come from
the Lord; God will console and restore all beings. The same is suggested in
Matthew 17:11 after the Transfiguration Jesus recommends that his disciples do
not speak of this until his resurrection. They ask him whether Elijah will come
before the Messiah at the end of time; Jesus replies that Elijah will come and
God will restore all beings.
Peter’s discourse to the crowd in the temple
courts, which Origen will interpret as a clear announcement of the future
universal restoration and salvation, is to be contextualized within the Jewish eschatological
expectations of that time (the restoration of Israel, the entering of the
nations, and the forgiveness of sins). The same is the case with Acts 1:6: the
disciples asked the risen Jesus when he would restore the kingdom to Israel. Both
passages are Lukan, but the connection between Peter’s speech and the
announcement of universal apokatastasis is nevertheless interesting, not least
because four other texts belonging to the Petrine tradition support
restoration. Origen in Princ. 2:3:5
interprets the “universal restoration” announced in Acts 3:21 as the “perfect
end [telos]” and “the perfection of
all things” at the end of all aeons: “What will take place at the universal
restoration [in restitution omnium],
when all beings will achieve their perfect end, must be understood as something
beyond all aeons. Then there will be the perfect accomplishment of all, when
all being will no longer in any aeon, but God will be ‘all in all.’” (Note the
quotation of 1 Corinthians 15:28, Origen’s and Gregory of Nyssa’s favorite
passage in support of their doctrine of apokatastasis.) Likewise, Origen
interprets Acts 3:21 in reference to the eventual universal apokatastasis in Comm. in Matt. 17:19, where, echoing St.
Paul, he remarks that now we do not see God as God is, but we shall do so in
the end, and this end will be the universal restoration: “In the end, when
there will be ‘the restoration of all beings, of which God has spoken by means
of his holy prophets from time immemorial,’ we shall see God not as now, when
we see what God is not, but as it becomes that future state, when we shall see
what God is.” In Hom. in Ier. 14:18,
Origen connects Jeremiah 15:19 to Acts 3:21: “If we return, God will restore
us: the end of this promise is the same as is written in the Acts of the
Apostles: ‘until the times of universal restoration, of which God has spoken
from time immemorial by means of his holy prophets’ in Jesus Christ.” (Ilaria
L.E. Ramelli, A Larger Hope? Universal
Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich [Eugene, Oreg.:
Cascade Book, 2019], 12-14)
As an aside,
Acts 3:21 is often abused by a few critics to “disprove” Jesus’ visitation to
the Nephites in the New World, as recorded in the Book of Mormon. For a
discussion, see: