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Joined: Nov 2007
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What does Eastern Christendom think about the salvation of the fallen angels? Is there any belief that these can or will eventually be saved?
I'm curious because I have been reading a book by Matthew Linn, SJ, that makes the comment that the Greek Eastern Orthodox are "encouraged to pray for the salvation of the fallen angels" (p. 77 of the book titled, Good Goats, Healing our Image of God, Paulist Press.)
The book also makes a distinction between the idea of universal salvation in which all will be saved (advanced by St. Gregory of Nyssa) to the condemned idea of Origen's apocatastasis in which all must be saved. (p. 68) The author takes the personal stand of the former in which he asserts that all will eventually make a free choice decision for God, while making the distinction to the latter which has been condemned which seems to rule out free will.
Any comments on these? What do Eastern Christians believe about this?
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Joined: May 2009
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As an Eastern Christian I wish it were so but I can't think of a reason to believe that it is. If wishes were horses all beggars would ride.
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Joined: Nov 2001
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Pray for the Apokatastasis, but don't teach it as doctrine.
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Pray for the Apokatastasis, but don't teach it as doctrine. Ah, I see you have echoed Saint Maximos the Confessor: "One should pray that Apokatastasis is true, but one would be foolish to teach it as doctrine." I very foolishly did not keep the reference. Don't suppose that you have it? I'd be grateful.
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does apokatastasis also include the fallen angels as well? What exactly is it that St. Gregory of Nyssa teaches?
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Joined: Mar 2005
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St. Maximos said that the Church knows of three forms of apokatastasis:
"One is the [apokatastasis] of everything according to the principle (logos) of virtue; in this apokatastasis one is restored who fulfills the principle of virtue in himself. The second is that of the whole [human nature] in the Resurrection. This is the apokatastasis to incorruption and immortality. The third, in the oft-cited words of Gregory of Nyssa, is the apokatastasis of the powers of the soul which, having lapsed into sin, are again restored to that condition in which they were created. For it is necessary that just as the entire nature of the flesh hopes in time to be taken up again into incorruption in the apokatastasis, so also the powers of the soul, having become distorted during the course of the ages had instilled in it a memory of evil, so that at the end of ages, not finding any rest, will come to God Who has no limit. And thus the distorted powers of the soul will be taken up into the primeval apokatastasis, into a merely discursive knowledge of, but not into the participation in, the good things [of God], where the Creator is known yet without being the cause of [their] sin." [St. Maximos, Quaestiones ad Thalassium, PG 90:796BC]
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