Wednesday, January 8, 2020

Ilaria L.E. Ramelli on Acts 3:20-21


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: