Saturday, February 12, 2022

Origen's Influence on Jane Lead (1624-1704) and the interpretation of Revelation 14:6 and "restoration" as "apokatastasis"

Commenting on the English Universalist Jane Lead (1624-1704) and the theology contained in her The Enochian Walks with God (1694), Robin A. Parry wrote that:

 

Like Origen, Lead also links the phrase “eternal gospel”—which, according to Revelation 14:6, will be proclaimed in the end times—with the restoration. She proclaims that the eternal gospel will reach both the free and the captives, be they in their bodies or out of them. The gospel will extend beyond the limits of time, Origen thought that the relationship that exists between the Old and the New Testament is the same that exists between the New Testament and the “eternal gospel” (more precisely, “gospel of the aeon,” which will be revealed in the future aeon). In On First Principles 3.6.3 and 6.7 Origen links the “eternal gospel” to the acquisition of the likeness to God, the same connection that Lead draws in The Enochian Walks with God. Lead relates the “eternal gospel” to the eventual restoration in two further passages, making it possible, through demonstratable, that Origen’s work was one source that inspired her (if not directly, then perhaps mediated through another source). (Robin A. Parry, A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from The Reformation to the Nineteenth Century [Eugene, Oreg.: Cascade Books, 2019], 63; "restoration" here refers to the doctrine of apokatastasis, not "restoration of the gospel")