The following comes from Universalism: The Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian Church During Its First Five Hundred Years, originally published in 1899:
Gospel
Preached to the Dead.
The early Christian church almost,
if not quite universally believed that Christ made proclamation of the Gospel
to the dead in Hades. Says Huidekoper: “In the Second and Third Centuries every
branch and division of Christians believed that Christ preached to the departed.”
[Dr. Alvah Havey, State of the Impenitent Dead, pp. 131, 2] Dietelmaier
declares [Anc. Hist. Univ., Note] this doctrine was believed by all
Christians. Of course, if souls were placed where their doom was irretrievable
salvation would not be offered to them; whence it follows that the early
Christians believed in post-mortem. Allin says that “some writers teach that
the apostles also preached in Hades. Some say that the Blessed Virgin did the
same. Some even say that Simeon went before Christ to Hades.” All these
testimonies go to show that the earliest of the fathers did not regard the
grave as the dead-line which the love of God could not cross, but that the door
of mercy is open hereafter as here. “The platonic doctrine of a separate state,
where the spirits of the departed are purified, and on which the later doctrine
of purgatory was founded, was approved by all the expositors of Christianity
who were of the Alexandrian school, as was the custom of performing religious
services at the tombs of the dead. Nor was there much difference between them
and Tertullian in these particulars.”
In the early ages of the church
great stress was laid on I Pet. iii. 19: “He (Christ) went and preached unto
the spirits in prison.” That this doctrine was prevalent as late as Augustine’s
day is evident from the fact that the doctrine is anathemitised in his list of
heresies—number 79. And even as late of the Ninth Century it was condemned by
Pope Boniface VI. It was believed that our Lord not only proclaimed the Gospel
to all the dead but that he liberated them all. How would it be possible for a
Christian to entertain the thought that all the wicked who died before the
advent of our Lord were released from bondage, and that any who died after his
advent would suffer endless woe? Eusebius says: “Christ, caring for the
salvation of all opened a way of return to life for the dead bound in the
chains of death.” Athanasius: “The devil cast out of Hades, sees all the
fettered beings led forth by the courage of the Savior.” [Univer. Assorted,
p. 105] Origen on I Kings, xxviii:32: “Jesus descended into Hades, and the
prophets before him, and they proclaimed beforehand the coming of Christ.”
Didymus observes “In the liberation of all no one remains a captive; at the
time of the Lord’s passion he alone (Satan) was injured, who lost all the
captives he was keeping.” Cyril of Alexandria: “And wandering down even to
Hades he has emptied the dark, secret, invisible treasures.” Gregory of
Nazianzus: “Until Christ loosed by his blood all who groaned under Tartarian
chains.” Jerome on Jonah ii:6: “Our Lord was shut up in aeonian bars in order that
he might set free all who had been shut up.”
Such passages might be multiplied,
demonstrating that the early church regarded the conquest by Christ of the
departed as universal. He set free from bonds all the dead in Hades. If the
primitive Christians believed that all the wicked of all the aeons preceding
the death of Christ were released, how can we suppose them to have regarded the
wicked subsequent to his death as destined to suffer interminable torments?
Clement of Alexandria is explicit in declaring that the Gospel was preached to
all, both Jews and Gentiles, in Hades;--that “the sole cause of the Lord’s descent
to the underworld was to preach the gospel.” (Strom. VI.) Origen says: “not
only while Jesus was in the body did he win over not a few only, but when he became
a soul, without the covering of the body, he dwelt among those would (in Hades)
which were without bodily covering, converting such of them as were fit for it.”
(John Wesley Hanson, Universalism: The Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian
Church During Its First Five Hundred Years [Adansonia Publishing, 2018], 32-33)
Condition
of the Dead not Final.
That the condition of the dead was
not regarded as unalterably fixed is evident from the fact that prayers for the
dead were customary anciently, and that, too, before the doctrine of purgatory
was formulated. The living believed—and so should we believe—that the dead have
migrated to another country, where the good offices of supervisors on earth
avail. Perpetua begged for the help of her brother, child of a Pagan father,
who had died unbaptized. In Tertullian the widow prays for the soul of her
departed husband. Repentance by the dead is conceded by Clement, and the
prayers of the good on earth help them.
The dogma of the purificatory
character of future punishment did not degenerate into the doctrine of
punishment for believers only, until the Fourth Century; nor did that error crystallize
into the Catholic purgatory until later. Hagenbach says: “Comparing Gregory’s
doctrine with the earlier, and more spiritual notions concerning the efficacy
of the purifying fire of the intermediate state, we may adopt the sentiment of
Schmidt that the belief in a lasting desire of perfection, which death itself
cannot quench, degenerated into a belief in purgatory.”
Plumtre (“Spirits in Prison,”
London, p. 25) has a valuable statement: “In every form; from the solemn
liturgies which embodied the belief of her profoundest thinkers are truest
worshippers, to the simple words of hope and love which were traced over the
graves of the poor, her voice (the church of the first ages) went up without a
doubt or misgiving, in prayers for the souls of the departed;” showing that
they could not have regarded their condition as unalterably fixed at death.
Prof. Plumptre quotes from Lee’s “Christian Doctrine of Prayer for the
Departed,” to show the early Christians’ belief that intercessions for the dead
would be of avail to them. Even Augustine accepted the doctrine. He prayed
after his mother’s death, that her sins might be forgiven, and that his father
might also receive parson. (“Confessions,” ix. 13.) [Lives of the Fathers,
p. 112]
The Platonic doctrine of a
separate state where the spirits of the departed are purified, and on which the
later doctrine of purgatory was founded, was approved by all the expositors of
Christianity who were of the Alexandrian school, as was the custom of
performing religious services at the tombs of the dead. Uhlhorn gives similar
testimony: “For deceased persons their relatives brought gifts on the
anniversary of their death, a beautiful custom, which vividly exhibited the
connection between the church above and the church below.” Origen’s tenet of
Catharsis of Purification was absorbed by the growing belief in purgatory. [Eternal
Hope, p. 84] (Ibid. 35)
Epistle to Diognetus 10:7 reads:
Then, though thou art placed on
earth, thou shalt behold that God liveth in heaven; then shalt thou begin to
declare the mysteries of God; then shalt thou both love and admire those that
are punished because they will not deny God; then shalt thou condemn the deceit
and error of the world; when thou shalt perceive the true life which is in
heaven, when thou shalt despise the apparent death which is here on earth, when
thou shalt fear the real death, which is reserved for those that shall be
condemned to the eternal fire that shall punish those delivered over to it unto
the end (μέχρι τέλους κολάσει). (Lightoot)
Commenting on this text, Hanson wrote that:
Even if aionion usually meant
endless, it is limited here by the word “unto” which has the force of until, as
does aidios in Jude 6,--“aidios chains under darkness, unto (or until) the
judgment of the great day.” Such a limited chastisement, it would seem, could
only be believed in by one who regarded God as Diognetus’s correspondent did,
as one who “still is, was always, and ever will be kind and good, and free from
wrath.” (Ibid., 42)
